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Jun. 16th, 2013 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeVery, very last minute amnesty fics for Kink Bingo oops.
Untitled 1, 2, 3, 4
Fandom: Peter Jackson's The Hobbit
Characters: Dwalin, Fili, Bofur, Thorin, a host of female OCs.
Rating: PG-13. It's not very kinky Kink Bingo. (Well, not very explicit.)
Summary: Dwarves get laid. Because it's Kink Bingo.
Prompts: Teasing, Washing/Cleaning, Oral Fixation, Writing on the Body
"You put me down this second! Put me d-- my brothers will hang you off the ..."
Few of those protests saw a finish, considering she kept bouncing on his shoulder. Weak and half-hearted protests, he guessed, considering she could easily squirm off his shoulder if she wanted to, or wriggle or something. He also guessed, though he'd never seen, that she could give him a fair thrashing if she objected in fact. Instead she was slapping her hand lightly against his leather breastplate and letting her legs hang down his back.
Eventually she ran out of insults and he ran out of breath. Or at least, energy he wished to expend running off with her. "Are you quite finished?" she asked, drumming her fingers on his head.
"Think so!" he chuckled, and dumped her on the ground.
She landed hard but recovered quickly enough to kick his legs out from under him and, when he fell backwards with a grunt, sit on him. Astride his hips like a pony, folding her arms and leaning forward till they were nose to nose.
"Don't drop me again."
"I didn't dr--" His protest cut off with a gasp as she rocked forward, digging her body against his.
"Say, 'yes, Hlif.'"
She even let him breathe to say it. "Yes, Hlif."
"Good lad." Her fingers hooked into his trousers, and she leaned forward again until her mouth, open, hovered over his. He felt her breath puffing hot and damp. "Now. Surely you had some reason for bringing me out all this way."
He did have a reason. A very good reason. He could even say it if she'd give him the chance instead of touching him the moment he opened his mouth to speak. What came out sounded much more like cursing than speaking.
"What was that?"
Dwalin repeated himself and elaborated, in considerable detail. She did interrupt a couple of times, both to touch and to shift her weight over him until she could undo the front of his trousers without difficulty. It finally occurred to him that not for nothing was she a skilled locksmith. "You're a wicked, wicked wench," he concluded, gasping that last out in a distressingly high pitch.
"I know," she grinned back at him. "If I weren't, you wouldn't enjoy this so much."
He took that as an invitation to roll them again and fling her to the ground. She didn't seem to mind.
His arms felt like iron bars. Molten iron bars. Molten iron bars that Uncle Thorin had been pounding at the smithy all day, which was more apt, now that he thought about it, since Uncle Thorin had been pounding on him for half of the day. When Mister Dwalin hadn't been doing it, all under Balin's direction. The old dwarf had made a point to say Fili was doing well, was improving, but that did little to ease the sting of the two dozen cuts his uncle and near-uncle inflicted on him over the last several hours. All he wanted now was a hot bath in the springs and to go to bed. If Kili hadn't gotten there first. He loved his little brother, but for such a slender dwarf Kili could be an awful blanket thief.
He was so tired he didn't realize that was a head of hair rather than a dried-brown bush at the edge of the water. "I'm sorry," he stammered, tripping over a pile of clothes he'd managed to miss on the way in. "I didn't realize this spring was occupied."
She (he hadn't noticed it was a she, either) tilted her head back to look at him. "Well. Maybe it's not," she grinned. Then whipped around, her eyes wide and staring. "I... no, I'm sorry, I'll leave..." She lurched out of the spring.
"No, no, that's all right, you don't have to..." Only between their haste and the wet stones at the edge of the pool she managed to slip, and he managed to half-catch her, and they both went sprawling. She was slick, still dripping wet, and very naked. He didn't think he was clothed enough to quite conceal how much that got his attention.
"Sorry," he mumbled, extricating himself with as much caution as he could manage. Not as much as he would have liked, not when the fall jolted already sore muscles and he'd somehow managed to wrench something serious in one hip. "Sorry, I'm sorry..."
"You're hurt..." she sounded puzzled. Before he knew what was happening she had both hands on his arm, was practically lifting him to his feet. "Here. You definitely need the hot spring more than I do."
Moving both helped and hurt worse. He knew it kept him from stiffening up, he could feel his muscles unknotting as they slowly, carefully undressed him, and still there were moments when he turned or bent that he had to bite back a hiss of pain. Sharp, stinging pain. Once they were done maneuvering him out of his clothes and he could focus on something other than not making a fool of himself again, he tried to straighten.
"I can manage on my own, thanks."
She didn't move. "Of course you can," she said, as they continued into the spring. And it turned out to be a good thing when his slipping into the water turned out to be a controlled fall only because of her grip on his arm. "See? Right as raindrops."
Fili glared up at her, well, more of a mock-glare. "You could let me have at least a little bit of dignity."
"Why?"
He couldn't think of a good answer for that.
When he didn't reply she started to gather her clothes, and had her shift most of the way on before he remembered. "No, you don't have to go," Fili moved to the other side of the spring. "I told you, it's all right." And now he didn't want her to go, after her help and kindness. Not that he would say it out loud, even thinking it made him feel foolish, but it seemed that having someone to talk to and laugh with was as soothing as the hot water. Strange company was better than no company, right?
She paused with one arm and half her shift over her head, the other half draping down the opposite hip. "Are you sure?"
He shrugged. "I wouldn't have offered otherwise?" Though she might not want to share a bath with a stranger. Though he somehow didn't think, after having helped undress him and get him into the water, that she'd mind very much.
"Well. All right." She pulled the shift off the rest of the way and slid into the hot water with him.
It wasn't as soothing as he'd expected. Not at first. He didn't know what to say or where to look or move to, and he wasn't sure what she expected of him. She, on the other hand, stretched out where she had been resting and closed her eyes with a tiny sigh. A familiar sigh, too. He sat up, grimacing as it pulled at his back. "Are you all right?"
"I've been better," she admitted, opening her eyes and smiling at him. "There was a horse took some disagreement to how I was brushing him. You can barely see the bruising now..." Her fingertips brushed down over her breasts and belly, and now that she called his attention to it he could see where her skin was yellow and green. "Anyway, the stablemaster suggested there were springs up here where I could..."
"Soak out some of the stiffness," Fili grinned ruefully. "Master Balin told me the same thing."
"Master Balin..." Her eyes went wide. Recognition crossed her face in a series of increasingly chagrined expressions, her cheeks coloring bright red. Redder, taking the heat from the steam into account. "But that's... then you're..." And she lurched out of the water again. "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I didn't know this, I, I'll go, I just..."
"No, don't..." he reached out to her again, only this time he grabbed from a much lower position and ended up tugging her off balance, sending her splashing back against him and knocking them both into the rock wall of the basin. It hurt. It knocked the breath out of both of them and her elbow dug into his ribs. And by the sound of her, he'd managed to jar her own likely cracked ribs. "I'm sorry," he wheezed. "Sorry."
She could only pant and attempt to find a more comfortable position, at least until she realized what moving when she was directly on top of him would do. Was doing. He'd been trying to ignore that. "Sorry," she mumbled.
"You're sorry?" Fili laughed, softly, so he didn't worry her further. "I'm the one who grabbed you."
"I mean..." But there was no way to apologize without calling attention to what she'd done. "If I've overstepped." All right, so maybe some way.
"You haven't."
"Well. All right, then."
They both took a second to get their breath back. Carefully, hesitant to be any kind of forceful, he moved her to what he thought might be a more comfortable position for them to settle in. Though it reminded her of where she was, and she blushed brightly, ducking her head. She did not, he noticed, protest or try to leave again. Or even change position much.
"You took quite a beating," was what she did say, and he held his breath as she poked at a couple of the bruises down his shoulder, one of them with a cut on it.
When she was done poking he shrugged. "It's training. The enemy won't hold back in battle, I can't learn to defend myself or my people if I don't learn to fight properly."
"That's true, I suppose. Looks painful."
He didn't know what he was meant to say to that. "I'll get better. And then they won't hit me so much."
She chuckled. "In time. Do you know how you can tell a stableboy is new?"
"I have the feeling you're going to tell me..."
"By his limping. New stableboys haven't yet learned to keep their feet out of the way of the horses."
He would have chuckled more at that, or in any way acted as though he'd paid attention, except that was the point at which she'd decided to change position entirely from sitting crossways over his lap to sitting astride, and all thought flew out of his head for a moment. She'd done that on purpose. Her thighs clenched around his and his hands clutched at her waist in response, and the hot spring seemed cool by comparison. "Typical of the young," he managed. "More enthusiasm than sense."
Too late, he realized that might not be the best thing to say in this particular situation. She grinned shyly at him. "Oh, is that what this is?" Her thighs clenched around his again as she tickled the side of his knee with her toes. He gasped. Laughed, tickled her back.
"Uncle would say so," he admitted. "That's not ... I'm not saying..."
"That I should be thinking about your uncle?" She cocked her head to one side. "He is rather a--"
"I don't want to talk about my uncle right now," he answered, just before he kissed her.
More enthusiasm than sense about covered it, or more enthusiasm than skill. It was awkward, and it took some experimentation for them both to find a rhythm they could manage together, and when they had to stop for breath they had almost sunk into the water. But he didn't ache anymore. He didn't think she did, either. Well. Not that way.
"Seems Balin was right," he mused aloud. "Hot springs are good for soothing the body's aches and pains..."
She splashed him for that. He grinned, splashed her back. It escalated quickly, first to full out attempting to duck each other, then when they discovered the joys of slick, wet hands over each other's bodies, into clinging and kissing and fumbling to hold each other closer. She looked him up and down between those moments, laughing.
"You look a mess."
"So do you," he retorted playfully. "You've got mud in your hair."
"I do not!" But she brought her hands up to try and untangle it, which didn't work so well. The worst of it was on the back where she'd slid down against one side of the spring.
"Here," he paddled around behind her. "Here, let me." Scooping the water up in his hands, he poured it gently down her hair and over her back as she closed her eyes. He paused between scoopfuls of water to look, now that the spring had settled from their romping. She was, he realized, incredibly beautiful. He hadn't noticed when he'd come up, before. And he still didn't know who she was.
He'd opened his mouth to ask her name when she turned, mistaking his pause for having finished. "Well, then allow me to return the favor," He moved so she could get behind him, head still swimming. By the time she'd done washing out his hair and had started on his cuts and bruises (and she had a gentle touch that took him by surprise, even after all this) he'd forgotten what he was going to say.
When they heaved themselves out of the hot spring it was only to resume activities outside of it, on the grass, where they could manage more traction and less drifting all over the place. Her hair had darkened from brown to near black with the water, the way his had darkened to a muddy brown, except on her it looked perfect. She looked perfect. From the languid curve of her smiling mouth all the way down the line of her body, where he kissed every bruise he could find. Her fingers tangled and tugged at his hair when he moved lower, guiding himself by the sounds she made. He thought about asking her name, after, but she seemed too happily dazed to hear it. Not so dazed as to be unable to move. She dragged herself upright and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him soundly before he could ask anything. Including what she was after, which he could guess but prefered to be certain, at least until she hauled herself astride his lap again and then he didn't really need to ask. Just to follow her lead. Which he was more than happy to do.
It was dark by the time they were too exhausted to start again. Or dress. Or move much from where they'd ended up stretched out on the grass, and covered in bits of mud and leaves again. His mother would probably come looking for him for dinner, soon. If she didn't send Uncle, and that was one conversation he was sure he didn't want to have.
"'spose we should get presentable again."
"I thought you put up quite a good presentation," she said, perfectly straight-faced until the end of the sentence when she burst into giggles. Sharper giggles after he tickled her.
"With clothes on."
She sighed. "Oh, clothes, I suppose I can do clothes." The last few words were lost in the volume of fabric that made up her shift, tunic, and trousers, all of which he'd bundled up and flung at her. She flung his shirt back at him. They did manage to get dressed, though, even find their boots and get them on the right feet.
"And I suppose I'll see you around the market, my prince," she grinned at him, sketching a bow before she turned and practically skipped down the trail. A second or two before she hit the treeline again he remembered.
"But I don't even know your name!"
"I think she likes you."
"What? No..." Bofur looked where his brother was pointing with the soup spoon, but no one was looking their way. He couldn't pick out which 'she' he meant, either. "What are you on about?"
"Oh, trust me," Bombur chuckled and said nothing, and Bofur directed an irritable glare at his back as his brother trotted away to get something else from the kitchens. Anyway, there were half a dozen she's crowded at that table, along with a sprinkling of he's, and who was Bombur going on about, anyway? He couldn't tell.
Oh, no, yes he could. He'd just started looking at the wrong moment. This time when he looked up from the soup cauldron he caught the playful and direct stare from the blonde lady with the rather nice...
"Fruit?"
Bofur shook himself. Bombur had brought out a plate of grapes and apples and distracted him, and when he looked back he couldn't see her anymore. "Because that fat idiot is in the way," he muttered, snagging an apple.
"What... oh, you found her," Bombur looked over, grinned at his brother. "I'm right, aren't I."
"I wasn't paying attention," he huffed.
It was several minutes more before their replacements came to watch over the pots and dish out supper, and by the time he sat down with his own food he didn't bother to look for her. She'd have finished her meal and left for whatever business she had long ago. Bombur left him alone, sensing his brother's ill temper. And stealing the last of the biscuits, too. Bofur rolled the last few grapes around in his bowl, ready for the day to be over.
"Were you going to eat those?"
The hand that came down over his shoulder was too fine to be any of his kin, and the sleeve wasn't a pattern he recognized. But he knew the blonde braids when he looked up, and he knew that wicked smile as she put the grape to her lips, teasing it with a kiss before it disappeared into her mouth. A heartbeat later the sound popped back into the room again, and he blinked and shook his head.
"Rakel?"
Bombur looked up. Blinked, looked up, and roared to his feet to pull their childhood friend into a great big hug, lifting her off her feet. "I thought you were gone!"
"I thought I was, too, once or twice there, but..."
Bofur shook himself again, but sat back and let them catch up. Since the flight from Erebor so much had changed, he couldn't quite imagine himself as the little boy whose pigtails she'd pulled and braided into his brother's when they were sleeping, let alone her as the girl who he'd dangled above the pool by her ankles. He wasn't even a miner anymore, there were no more mines. And they'd lost track long before that.
"Oh, he's all right. He's just thinking too much, as always." Bombur's voice caught his attention. Still eating, but Rakel had a peach she was nibbling on, if nibbling was the right word for it. Juice dribbled out of her mouth and down her chin.
On purpose, he realized belatedly, because it gave her an excuse to draw her thumb over her damp lip and the room had gone quiet again. She had pale pink lips, but stained darker with the juice and the room had gone not only quiet, but steaming hot. "I am not," he protested weakly.
"You are," she told him, taking another bite and chewing with distinction and care before she spoke again. For the first time since Bombur had grown his brother left without Bofur noticing. "Far too much, I think. Let me finish this..."
She took another bite. Juice trickled down. The tip of her tongue slipped over her lips and Bofur heard himself swallow back that whimper.
"... and we'll go discuss it, shall we?"
He didn't stagger out of his room till late the next morning, dragging himself into the kitchen and barely aware of the grin he sported. Bombur was not in the least bit surprised and reacted appropriately, which was to say not at all.
"I told you she likes you."
The first time they met he was attempting to pay studious attention to the goings on which, since it amounted to all parties praising the other in the most ornate terms possible, was difficult. This portrait of the celebration of the accord between Elves, Dwarves, and Men had been commissioned for the people of Dale, and he didn't see a need for his presence in the first place. Still, his father and his grandfather both had requested that he be there, so, standing in the middle of a crowd of over-decorated worthies he was.
She was the artist's daughter, and his apprentice, or so he assumed by the way she mixed his paints and cleaned his equipment. And watched attentively what he was doing and beyond that it blurred until the tedious damn thing was over.
At the second sitting (or rather standing) he felt her watching him. She never stared when she noticed him looking, but every time he resumed standing like a boulder and unfocusing his gaze he felt her watching him. And at the third. And at the fourth.
After that session her father took some time to discuss the final arrangements of the painting, and she took advantage of the opportunity it afforded to talk to him.
"Hullo."
"... Hello." Why she was talking to him, he neither knew nor understood. She was a tiny thing, for a human, shorter even than him. Around Balin's height, perhaps.
"You don't remember my name, do you," she smiled pertly at him.
"Of course I know your name." He didn't. He should have; if he couldn't remember the name of someone he had met four times over he couldn't be expected to remember the names of the princes of the other realms, the emissaries from the other dwarven cities.
But he didn't remember her name. "Mm-hmm." And she didn't believe him when he said he did. "You could look a little happier, you know. Father's trying his best but you just come over so sour..."
"I am not sour!" His father and grandfather both looked around, and Thorin clenched his jaw and modulated his volume downwards. "I am not..."
"You are. You look positively sick."
"Are you always this irritating or is this something you save for your betters?"
"Betters? Who are you to say you're better than I am, you don't know a thing about me. You've no idea where I came from or who I am, for all you know I could be a princess in exile from some far off land. And if I were the simplest creature in the towns that wouldn't give you the right to..."
"Violet!"
That was her father. She flounced on past him, glaring hard enough to make him flush with self-conscious anger. "At least now I know your name," he hissed back.
She stopped. Took the tiniest brush from her father's tray, dipped it on the drying palette and grabbed his arm with her other hand, shoving up his sleeve with her wrist. Before he knew how to react, she wrote her name in graceful Common script on the inside of his forearm.
"There. Now you and your tiny mind won't forget."
He couldn't get rid of her after that. It seemed as though every time he went into town she was there running errands for her father, or in the market, or anywhere, really, that he went. It couldn't have been true. But it felt that way, and if she took notice of him at all it was to glare daggers at him, behind his back or to his face.
"Are you bound and determined to hate me?" he asked one day, growing sick of this hot-blooded and unprogressing war.
"Are you bound and determined to be an ass?"
"I..." he started to protest, then stopped. That hadn't gotten him anywhere, to begin with. It wasn't going to get him anywhere tonight. "I'm sorry. If I've given offense or hurt you in some way, I'm sorry. I truly didn't mean to."
It took her by surprise. Not so much as to put her entirely off balance, but she was surprised. And then she returned the surprise by dropping into a curtsey that was only slightly marred by the lack of skirts and her having to sweep imaginary fabric out to the side. "Then let's say no more about it."
Was it really that easy? He didn't know where to go from here, but courtly reflex took over where his imagination failed. "Were you on your way?"
"Just to market," she tilted her head back and up at him, something he wasn't used to from the race of Men but he was starting to have his doubts about her. "Father needs some new pigments."
"Would you like some company?" He couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. From his own mouth, at that.
She didn't look as though she could believe it either. But when he extended his arm, she took it, stepping with him. "I'd like that." Her eyes gleamed. "Your Highness."
More cordial after that turned to friendly, companionable, turned into more than a few hours of sitting on the short wall behind her father's workshop and talking about nothing and everything. Her father's business, his grandfather's responsibilities, his fear of assuming them in time, her shame over her quick tongue and temper. She was no one he would meet within Erebor, and somehow that made her safe to tell all his secrets to. Who would she tell? as she herself pointed out on at least one occasion.
"You could..." But she stared at him calmly, still, like one of her father's paintings, and he found he couldn't tell her that he was thinking she might go to Erebor and tell his father or brother and sister of his fears. "Never mind."
He didn't need an excuse to go to the town, but he found himself searching for one anyway. To justify it to himself. Even if he didn't see her in the market sometimes he spent hours wandering, looking at the many wonderous things others had made, sitting on the wall to think, or dream. She found him like that one afternoon, stretched out on the wall with his arm over his face as he drifted. She'd thought he was asleep. When he proved he wasn't, she froze stiff in shock.
"Where did you learn that?" he murmured, rumbling in his amusement.
"An old story," she breathed. Barely moving. Their friendship remained solid enough, but this was a bit more than that.
"Tell me?"
He never did get to find out the end. It probably didn't matter, anyway.
But now he did have to make sure his excuses were good enough to take a few hours out of the day and go into town. Now he was sure every bit of it was written all over his face when he left, where he went and who he was seeing and what they did in her father's studio among the props and paints. In the garden when she spread a blanket down, or in her small room that was nonetheless enough for their purposes. And their fingers laced together, and their palms met, as lips and bodies touched and the world around them didn't matter for a little while. Their secret.
"Well, father knows, of course."
She'd waited till he was drinking on purpose. "What."
"Not ..." she laughed, passing him a scrap of cloth to mop himself up with. "Not the specifics. I mean, not that it's you. But that there's someone."
He tried to work his mind around that while she got up and straightened things a bit. With all the clients who came and posed in the studio with bowls of fruit, images of heraldry, there were quite a number of oddities lying around the place. Some of them had seen other uses, too. He still couldn't manage to look at that feather fan without smiling.
"What are those, anyway?" She was tucking something away in an ostensibly secret compartment in a desk, though it couldn't be that secret since it was open every time he visited.
She held them out of his reach. "Letters," she grinned. "From a merchant to his mistress here in Dale. He sees her every time he comes by with Father's pigments don't you dare!"
Too late, he'd snatched them anyway. And started to read them, though it wasn't what he expected. Intimate thoughts and either memories or suggestions for the next time, he wasn't sure. It gave him a few ideas and a lot more discomfort, and she snatched the letters back with an amused look and a kiss on his cheek.
"I told you not to read those."
"You didn't tell me they were..." He watched her set the letters back in the drawer. "Like that."
"Well, what did you expect? They see each other only for a few days, they spend most of their time in bed, that's probably all they know ..." she yelped as he grabbed the corner of her shift, toppling her over on him. "...of each other."
He laughed. "I knew you'd say that." She stuck her tongue out at him.
They lay there for a little while, soaking in the quiet and the warmth. Thinking how much that knowledge meant to her. All those hours of their talks, and she had soaked up everything he'd had to tell her like a flower soaking up the sun and rain, listening intently to even something as trivial as Dis always stealing the last pastry. Knowing who a person was and what was in their heart meant a great deal to her. And, he realized belatedly, those letters showed two people who didn't care where each other's hearts lied, as long as ther bodies breathed the same air every now and again. If she were to take up with someone in some far off city...
He rolled her over onto the couch, took one of the small brushes and found a pot of white paint, or what looked enough like paint that it would serve the purpose. She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him as though he'd lost his mind. "What are you doing?"
"Shhh." He smiled, pulling up at the foot of the couch and beginning at her toes, which wriggled slightly under the brush. "And hold still. I'm writing you a letter."
She did hold still, eyes widening. "Will you read it to me when you're done?"
"If you're good. And hold still."
In the end he never finished the letter, and she held still for even less of the reading. But he got to read out the important parts anyway.
Untitled 1, 2, 3, 4
Fandom: Peter Jackson's The Hobbit
Characters: Dwalin, Fili, Bofur, Thorin, a host of female OCs.
Rating: PG-13. It's not very kinky Kink Bingo. (Well, not very explicit.)
Summary: Dwarves get laid. Because it's Kink Bingo.
Prompts: Teasing, Washing/Cleaning, Oral Fixation, Writing on the Body
"You put me down this second! Put me d-- my brothers will hang you off the ..."
Few of those protests saw a finish, considering she kept bouncing on his shoulder. Weak and half-hearted protests, he guessed, considering she could easily squirm off his shoulder if she wanted to, or wriggle or something. He also guessed, though he'd never seen, that she could give him a fair thrashing if she objected in fact. Instead she was slapping her hand lightly against his leather breastplate and letting her legs hang down his back.
Eventually she ran out of insults and he ran out of breath. Or at least, energy he wished to expend running off with her. "Are you quite finished?" she asked, drumming her fingers on his head.
"Think so!" he chuckled, and dumped her on the ground.
She landed hard but recovered quickly enough to kick his legs out from under him and, when he fell backwards with a grunt, sit on him. Astride his hips like a pony, folding her arms and leaning forward till they were nose to nose.
"Don't drop me again."
"I didn't dr--" His protest cut off with a gasp as she rocked forward, digging her body against his.
"Say, 'yes, Hlif.'"
She even let him breathe to say it. "Yes, Hlif."
"Good lad." Her fingers hooked into his trousers, and she leaned forward again until her mouth, open, hovered over his. He felt her breath puffing hot and damp. "Now. Surely you had some reason for bringing me out all this way."
He did have a reason. A very good reason. He could even say it if she'd give him the chance instead of touching him the moment he opened his mouth to speak. What came out sounded much more like cursing than speaking.
"What was that?"
Dwalin repeated himself and elaborated, in considerable detail. She did interrupt a couple of times, both to touch and to shift her weight over him until she could undo the front of his trousers without difficulty. It finally occurred to him that not for nothing was she a skilled locksmith. "You're a wicked, wicked wench," he concluded, gasping that last out in a distressingly high pitch.
"I know," she grinned back at him. "If I weren't, you wouldn't enjoy this so much."
He took that as an invitation to roll them again and fling her to the ground. She didn't seem to mind.
His arms felt like iron bars. Molten iron bars. Molten iron bars that Uncle Thorin had been pounding at the smithy all day, which was more apt, now that he thought about it, since Uncle Thorin had been pounding on him for half of the day. When Mister Dwalin hadn't been doing it, all under Balin's direction. The old dwarf had made a point to say Fili was doing well, was improving, but that did little to ease the sting of the two dozen cuts his uncle and near-uncle inflicted on him over the last several hours. All he wanted now was a hot bath in the springs and to go to bed. If Kili hadn't gotten there first. He loved his little brother, but for such a slender dwarf Kili could be an awful blanket thief.
He was so tired he didn't realize that was a head of hair rather than a dried-brown bush at the edge of the water. "I'm sorry," he stammered, tripping over a pile of clothes he'd managed to miss on the way in. "I didn't realize this spring was occupied."
She (he hadn't noticed it was a she, either) tilted her head back to look at him. "Well. Maybe it's not," she grinned. Then whipped around, her eyes wide and staring. "I... no, I'm sorry, I'll leave..." She lurched out of the spring.
"No, no, that's all right, you don't have to..." Only between their haste and the wet stones at the edge of the pool she managed to slip, and he managed to half-catch her, and they both went sprawling. She was slick, still dripping wet, and very naked. He didn't think he was clothed enough to quite conceal how much that got his attention.
"Sorry," he mumbled, extricating himself with as much caution as he could manage. Not as much as he would have liked, not when the fall jolted already sore muscles and he'd somehow managed to wrench something serious in one hip. "Sorry, I'm sorry..."
"You're hurt..." she sounded puzzled. Before he knew what was happening she had both hands on his arm, was practically lifting him to his feet. "Here. You definitely need the hot spring more than I do."
Moving both helped and hurt worse. He knew it kept him from stiffening up, he could feel his muscles unknotting as they slowly, carefully undressed him, and still there were moments when he turned or bent that he had to bite back a hiss of pain. Sharp, stinging pain. Once they were done maneuvering him out of his clothes and he could focus on something other than not making a fool of himself again, he tried to straighten.
"I can manage on my own, thanks."
She didn't move. "Of course you can," she said, as they continued into the spring. And it turned out to be a good thing when his slipping into the water turned out to be a controlled fall only because of her grip on his arm. "See? Right as raindrops."
Fili glared up at her, well, more of a mock-glare. "You could let me have at least a little bit of dignity."
"Why?"
He couldn't think of a good answer for that.
When he didn't reply she started to gather her clothes, and had her shift most of the way on before he remembered. "No, you don't have to go," Fili moved to the other side of the spring. "I told you, it's all right." And now he didn't want her to go, after her help and kindness. Not that he would say it out loud, even thinking it made him feel foolish, but it seemed that having someone to talk to and laugh with was as soothing as the hot water. Strange company was better than no company, right?
She paused with one arm and half her shift over her head, the other half draping down the opposite hip. "Are you sure?"
He shrugged. "I wouldn't have offered otherwise?" Though she might not want to share a bath with a stranger. Though he somehow didn't think, after having helped undress him and get him into the water, that she'd mind very much.
"Well. All right." She pulled the shift off the rest of the way and slid into the hot water with him.
It wasn't as soothing as he'd expected. Not at first. He didn't know what to say or where to look or move to, and he wasn't sure what she expected of him. She, on the other hand, stretched out where she had been resting and closed her eyes with a tiny sigh. A familiar sigh, too. He sat up, grimacing as it pulled at his back. "Are you all right?"
"I've been better," she admitted, opening her eyes and smiling at him. "There was a horse took some disagreement to how I was brushing him. You can barely see the bruising now..." Her fingertips brushed down over her breasts and belly, and now that she called his attention to it he could see where her skin was yellow and green. "Anyway, the stablemaster suggested there were springs up here where I could..."
"Soak out some of the stiffness," Fili grinned ruefully. "Master Balin told me the same thing."
"Master Balin..." Her eyes went wide. Recognition crossed her face in a series of increasingly chagrined expressions, her cheeks coloring bright red. Redder, taking the heat from the steam into account. "But that's... then you're..." And she lurched out of the water again. "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I didn't know this, I, I'll go, I just..."
"No, don't..." he reached out to her again, only this time he grabbed from a much lower position and ended up tugging her off balance, sending her splashing back against him and knocking them both into the rock wall of the basin. It hurt. It knocked the breath out of both of them and her elbow dug into his ribs. And by the sound of her, he'd managed to jar her own likely cracked ribs. "I'm sorry," he wheezed. "Sorry."
She could only pant and attempt to find a more comfortable position, at least until she realized what moving when she was directly on top of him would do. Was doing. He'd been trying to ignore that. "Sorry," she mumbled.
"You're sorry?" Fili laughed, softly, so he didn't worry her further. "I'm the one who grabbed you."
"I mean..." But there was no way to apologize without calling attention to what she'd done. "If I've overstepped." All right, so maybe some way.
"You haven't."
"Well. All right, then."
They both took a second to get their breath back. Carefully, hesitant to be any kind of forceful, he moved her to what he thought might be a more comfortable position for them to settle in. Though it reminded her of where she was, and she blushed brightly, ducking her head. She did not, he noticed, protest or try to leave again. Or even change position much.
"You took quite a beating," was what she did say, and he held his breath as she poked at a couple of the bruises down his shoulder, one of them with a cut on it.
When she was done poking he shrugged. "It's training. The enemy won't hold back in battle, I can't learn to defend myself or my people if I don't learn to fight properly."
"That's true, I suppose. Looks painful."
He didn't know what he was meant to say to that. "I'll get better. And then they won't hit me so much."
She chuckled. "In time. Do you know how you can tell a stableboy is new?"
"I have the feeling you're going to tell me..."
"By his limping. New stableboys haven't yet learned to keep their feet out of the way of the horses."
He would have chuckled more at that, or in any way acted as though he'd paid attention, except that was the point at which she'd decided to change position entirely from sitting crossways over his lap to sitting astride, and all thought flew out of his head for a moment. She'd done that on purpose. Her thighs clenched around his and his hands clutched at her waist in response, and the hot spring seemed cool by comparison. "Typical of the young," he managed. "More enthusiasm than sense."
Too late, he realized that might not be the best thing to say in this particular situation. She grinned shyly at him. "Oh, is that what this is?" Her thighs clenched around his again as she tickled the side of his knee with her toes. He gasped. Laughed, tickled her back.
"Uncle would say so," he admitted. "That's not ... I'm not saying..."
"That I should be thinking about your uncle?" She cocked her head to one side. "He is rather a--"
"I don't want to talk about my uncle right now," he answered, just before he kissed her.
More enthusiasm than sense about covered it, or more enthusiasm than skill. It was awkward, and it took some experimentation for them both to find a rhythm they could manage together, and when they had to stop for breath they had almost sunk into the water. But he didn't ache anymore. He didn't think she did, either. Well. Not that way.
"Seems Balin was right," he mused aloud. "Hot springs are good for soothing the body's aches and pains..."
She splashed him for that. He grinned, splashed her back. It escalated quickly, first to full out attempting to duck each other, then when they discovered the joys of slick, wet hands over each other's bodies, into clinging and kissing and fumbling to hold each other closer. She looked him up and down between those moments, laughing.
"You look a mess."
"So do you," he retorted playfully. "You've got mud in your hair."
"I do not!" But she brought her hands up to try and untangle it, which didn't work so well. The worst of it was on the back where she'd slid down against one side of the spring.
"Here," he paddled around behind her. "Here, let me." Scooping the water up in his hands, he poured it gently down her hair and over her back as she closed her eyes. He paused between scoopfuls of water to look, now that the spring had settled from their romping. She was, he realized, incredibly beautiful. He hadn't noticed when he'd come up, before. And he still didn't know who she was.
He'd opened his mouth to ask her name when she turned, mistaking his pause for having finished. "Well, then allow me to return the favor," He moved so she could get behind him, head still swimming. By the time she'd done washing out his hair and had started on his cuts and bruises (and she had a gentle touch that took him by surprise, even after all this) he'd forgotten what he was going to say.
When they heaved themselves out of the hot spring it was only to resume activities outside of it, on the grass, where they could manage more traction and less drifting all over the place. Her hair had darkened from brown to near black with the water, the way his had darkened to a muddy brown, except on her it looked perfect. She looked perfect. From the languid curve of her smiling mouth all the way down the line of her body, where he kissed every bruise he could find. Her fingers tangled and tugged at his hair when he moved lower, guiding himself by the sounds she made. He thought about asking her name, after, but she seemed too happily dazed to hear it. Not so dazed as to be unable to move. She dragged herself upright and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him soundly before he could ask anything. Including what she was after, which he could guess but prefered to be certain, at least until she hauled herself astride his lap again and then he didn't really need to ask. Just to follow her lead. Which he was more than happy to do.
It was dark by the time they were too exhausted to start again. Or dress. Or move much from where they'd ended up stretched out on the grass, and covered in bits of mud and leaves again. His mother would probably come looking for him for dinner, soon. If she didn't send Uncle, and that was one conversation he was sure he didn't want to have.
"'spose we should get presentable again."
"I thought you put up quite a good presentation," she said, perfectly straight-faced until the end of the sentence when she burst into giggles. Sharper giggles after he tickled her.
"With clothes on."
She sighed. "Oh, clothes, I suppose I can do clothes." The last few words were lost in the volume of fabric that made up her shift, tunic, and trousers, all of which he'd bundled up and flung at her. She flung his shirt back at him. They did manage to get dressed, though, even find their boots and get them on the right feet.
"And I suppose I'll see you around the market, my prince," she grinned at him, sketching a bow before she turned and practically skipped down the trail. A second or two before she hit the treeline again he remembered.
"But I don't even know your name!"
"I think she likes you."
"What? No..." Bofur looked where his brother was pointing with the soup spoon, but no one was looking their way. He couldn't pick out which 'she' he meant, either. "What are you on about?"
"Oh, trust me," Bombur chuckled and said nothing, and Bofur directed an irritable glare at his back as his brother trotted away to get something else from the kitchens. Anyway, there were half a dozen she's crowded at that table, along with a sprinkling of he's, and who was Bombur going on about, anyway? He couldn't tell.
Oh, no, yes he could. He'd just started looking at the wrong moment. This time when he looked up from the soup cauldron he caught the playful and direct stare from the blonde lady with the rather nice...
"Fruit?"
Bofur shook himself. Bombur had brought out a plate of grapes and apples and distracted him, and when he looked back he couldn't see her anymore. "Because that fat idiot is in the way," he muttered, snagging an apple.
"What... oh, you found her," Bombur looked over, grinned at his brother. "I'm right, aren't I."
"I wasn't paying attention," he huffed.
It was several minutes more before their replacements came to watch over the pots and dish out supper, and by the time he sat down with his own food he didn't bother to look for her. She'd have finished her meal and left for whatever business she had long ago. Bombur left him alone, sensing his brother's ill temper. And stealing the last of the biscuits, too. Bofur rolled the last few grapes around in his bowl, ready for the day to be over.
"Were you going to eat those?"
The hand that came down over his shoulder was too fine to be any of his kin, and the sleeve wasn't a pattern he recognized. But he knew the blonde braids when he looked up, and he knew that wicked smile as she put the grape to her lips, teasing it with a kiss before it disappeared into her mouth. A heartbeat later the sound popped back into the room again, and he blinked and shook his head.
"Rakel?"
Bombur looked up. Blinked, looked up, and roared to his feet to pull their childhood friend into a great big hug, lifting her off her feet. "I thought you were gone!"
"I thought I was, too, once or twice there, but..."
Bofur shook himself again, but sat back and let them catch up. Since the flight from Erebor so much had changed, he couldn't quite imagine himself as the little boy whose pigtails she'd pulled and braided into his brother's when they were sleeping, let alone her as the girl who he'd dangled above the pool by her ankles. He wasn't even a miner anymore, there were no more mines. And they'd lost track long before that.
"Oh, he's all right. He's just thinking too much, as always." Bombur's voice caught his attention. Still eating, but Rakel had a peach she was nibbling on, if nibbling was the right word for it. Juice dribbled out of her mouth and down her chin.
On purpose, he realized belatedly, because it gave her an excuse to draw her thumb over her damp lip and the room had gone quiet again. She had pale pink lips, but stained darker with the juice and the room had gone not only quiet, but steaming hot. "I am not," he protested weakly.
"You are," she told him, taking another bite and chewing with distinction and care before she spoke again. For the first time since Bombur had grown his brother left without Bofur noticing. "Far too much, I think. Let me finish this..."
She took another bite. Juice trickled down. The tip of her tongue slipped over her lips and Bofur heard himself swallow back that whimper.
"... and we'll go discuss it, shall we?"
He didn't stagger out of his room till late the next morning, dragging himself into the kitchen and barely aware of the grin he sported. Bombur was not in the least bit surprised and reacted appropriately, which was to say not at all.
"I told you she likes you."
The first time they met he was attempting to pay studious attention to the goings on which, since it amounted to all parties praising the other in the most ornate terms possible, was difficult. This portrait of the celebration of the accord between Elves, Dwarves, and Men had been commissioned for the people of Dale, and he didn't see a need for his presence in the first place. Still, his father and his grandfather both had requested that he be there, so, standing in the middle of a crowd of over-decorated worthies he was.
She was the artist's daughter, and his apprentice, or so he assumed by the way she mixed his paints and cleaned his equipment. And watched attentively what he was doing and beyond that it blurred until the tedious damn thing was over.
At the second sitting (or rather standing) he felt her watching him. She never stared when she noticed him looking, but every time he resumed standing like a boulder and unfocusing his gaze he felt her watching him. And at the third. And at the fourth.
After that session her father took some time to discuss the final arrangements of the painting, and she took advantage of the opportunity it afforded to talk to him.
"Hullo."
"... Hello." Why she was talking to him, he neither knew nor understood. She was a tiny thing, for a human, shorter even than him. Around Balin's height, perhaps.
"You don't remember my name, do you," she smiled pertly at him.
"Of course I know your name." He didn't. He should have; if he couldn't remember the name of someone he had met four times over he couldn't be expected to remember the names of the princes of the other realms, the emissaries from the other dwarven cities.
But he didn't remember her name. "Mm-hmm." And she didn't believe him when he said he did. "You could look a little happier, you know. Father's trying his best but you just come over so sour..."
"I am not sour!" His father and grandfather both looked around, and Thorin clenched his jaw and modulated his volume downwards. "I am not..."
"You are. You look positively sick."
"Are you always this irritating or is this something you save for your betters?"
"Betters? Who are you to say you're better than I am, you don't know a thing about me. You've no idea where I came from or who I am, for all you know I could be a princess in exile from some far off land. And if I were the simplest creature in the towns that wouldn't give you the right to..."
"Violet!"
That was her father. She flounced on past him, glaring hard enough to make him flush with self-conscious anger. "At least now I know your name," he hissed back.
She stopped. Took the tiniest brush from her father's tray, dipped it on the drying palette and grabbed his arm with her other hand, shoving up his sleeve with her wrist. Before he knew how to react, she wrote her name in graceful Common script on the inside of his forearm.
"There. Now you and your tiny mind won't forget."
He couldn't get rid of her after that. It seemed as though every time he went into town she was there running errands for her father, or in the market, or anywhere, really, that he went. It couldn't have been true. But it felt that way, and if she took notice of him at all it was to glare daggers at him, behind his back or to his face.
"Are you bound and determined to hate me?" he asked one day, growing sick of this hot-blooded and unprogressing war.
"Are you bound and determined to be an ass?"
"I..." he started to protest, then stopped. That hadn't gotten him anywhere, to begin with. It wasn't going to get him anywhere tonight. "I'm sorry. If I've given offense or hurt you in some way, I'm sorry. I truly didn't mean to."
It took her by surprise. Not so much as to put her entirely off balance, but she was surprised. And then she returned the surprise by dropping into a curtsey that was only slightly marred by the lack of skirts and her having to sweep imaginary fabric out to the side. "Then let's say no more about it."
Was it really that easy? He didn't know where to go from here, but courtly reflex took over where his imagination failed. "Were you on your way?"
"Just to market," she tilted her head back and up at him, something he wasn't used to from the race of Men but he was starting to have his doubts about her. "Father needs some new pigments."
"Would you like some company?" He couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. From his own mouth, at that.
She didn't look as though she could believe it either. But when he extended his arm, she took it, stepping with him. "I'd like that." Her eyes gleamed. "Your Highness."
More cordial after that turned to friendly, companionable, turned into more than a few hours of sitting on the short wall behind her father's workshop and talking about nothing and everything. Her father's business, his grandfather's responsibilities, his fear of assuming them in time, her shame over her quick tongue and temper. She was no one he would meet within Erebor, and somehow that made her safe to tell all his secrets to. Who would she tell? as she herself pointed out on at least one occasion.
"You could..." But she stared at him calmly, still, like one of her father's paintings, and he found he couldn't tell her that he was thinking she might go to Erebor and tell his father or brother and sister of his fears. "Never mind."
He didn't need an excuse to go to the town, but he found himself searching for one anyway. To justify it to himself. Even if he didn't see her in the market sometimes he spent hours wandering, looking at the many wonderous things others had made, sitting on the wall to think, or dream. She found him like that one afternoon, stretched out on the wall with his arm over his face as he drifted. She'd thought he was asleep. When he proved he wasn't, she froze stiff in shock.
"Where did you learn that?" he murmured, rumbling in his amusement.
"An old story," she breathed. Barely moving. Their friendship remained solid enough, but this was a bit more than that.
"Tell me?"
He never did get to find out the end. It probably didn't matter, anyway.
But now he did have to make sure his excuses were good enough to take a few hours out of the day and go into town. Now he was sure every bit of it was written all over his face when he left, where he went and who he was seeing and what they did in her father's studio among the props and paints. In the garden when she spread a blanket down, or in her small room that was nonetheless enough for their purposes. And their fingers laced together, and their palms met, as lips and bodies touched and the world around them didn't matter for a little while. Their secret.
"Well, father knows, of course."
She'd waited till he was drinking on purpose. "What."
"Not ..." she laughed, passing him a scrap of cloth to mop himself up with. "Not the specifics. I mean, not that it's you. But that there's someone."
He tried to work his mind around that while she got up and straightened things a bit. With all the clients who came and posed in the studio with bowls of fruit, images of heraldry, there were quite a number of oddities lying around the place. Some of them had seen other uses, too. He still couldn't manage to look at that feather fan without smiling.
"What are those, anyway?" She was tucking something away in an ostensibly secret compartment in a desk, though it couldn't be that secret since it was open every time he visited.
She held them out of his reach. "Letters," she grinned. "From a merchant to his mistress here in Dale. He sees her every time he comes by with Father's pigments don't you dare!"
Too late, he'd snatched them anyway. And started to read them, though it wasn't what he expected. Intimate thoughts and either memories or suggestions for the next time, he wasn't sure. It gave him a few ideas and a lot more discomfort, and she snatched the letters back with an amused look and a kiss on his cheek.
"I told you not to read those."
"You didn't tell me they were..." He watched her set the letters back in the drawer. "Like that."
"Well, what did you expect? They see each other only for a few days, they spend most of their time in bed, that's probably all they know ..." she yelped as he grabbed the corner of her shift, toppling her over on him. "...of each other."
He laughed. "I knew you'd say that." She stuck her tongue out at him.
They lay there for a little while, soaking in the quiet and the warmth. Thinking how much that knowledge meant to her. All those hours of their talks, and she had soaked up everything he'd had to tell her like a flower soaking up the sun and rain, listening intently to even something as trivial as Dis always stealing the last pastry. Knowing who a person was and what was in their heart meant a great deal to her. And, he realized belatedly, those letters showed two people who didn't care where each other's hearts lied, as long as ther bodies breathed the same air every now and again. If she were to take up with someone in some far off city...
He rolled her over onto the couch, took one of the small brushes and found a pot of white paint, or what looked enough like paint that it would serve the purpose. She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him as though he'd lost his mind. "What are you doing?"
"Shhh." He smiled, pulling up at the foot of the couch and beginning at her toes, which wriggled slightly under the brush. "And hold still. I'm writing you a letter."
She did hold still, eyes widening. "Will you read it to me when you're done?"
"If you're good. And hold still."
In the end he never finished the letter, and she held still for even less of the reading. But he got to read out the important parts anyway.