My Nwalin Week fic!
Based on this post, and my response to this one (thanks, @hattedhedgehog, and thank you to @finnandfluke for suggesting I write it!).
“Gift” for a Day 5 prompt.
Dis blew on her tea, dipped her smallest finger in just enough to ascertain that it wasn’t too hot to drink (only when Dori had looked away, of course), and sipped. “Did you see the state of my brother’s beard today?” she asked. “It looked as though he’d caught it in a grain thresher.”
Dori perked up immediately. “Yes, I was hoping you’d mention it,” he said. “Oh, wouldn’t it be improper without your say-so! Hm, listen.” He leaned in conspiratorially and lifted his own teacup, pinky finger out just so, before taking a careful sip. “Then there was the state of Master Baggins’s clothing at tea-time yesterday. My finest work, and he’s ruined it. Grass stains all over, if you please!”
For anyone else, such complaining would have marked the complainer as a fussbudget to be dismissed and laughed at behind their well-dressed back. Not so for Dori, who had suffered quite enough in his lifetime – in both his own opinion and everyone else’s. “Rolled about outside, has he?” said Dis.
Dori sniffed. “He said he’d been picking flowers. I think he ought to change back into his old togs if he’d like to do that.”
Dis stifled a giggle, if only so that she wouldn’t spill her tea all over her gown (another Dori creation). She could so rarely indulge in her…well, her side of more discriminating taste apart from weekly tea with the most observant Dwarf in the mountain. Dori’s exquisite sitting-room tapestries were only a bonus. “Have you heard anything about this year’s nomination for…?” she trailed off delicately, and raised a single eyebrow at Dori. He wouldn’t need to hear the end of it.
And she was right; he didn’t. “Threadcraft guildsmaster?” Dori asked, and huffed when she nodded. “Now, I oughtn’t make airs of myself, but if they don’t choose my demonstration work in the competition, then perhaps the judges’ eyes aren’t what they used to be. I certainly have the administrative experience, if you count looking after Nori as work beyond the scope of most administrators.” From the wording of the sentence, Dis knew that Dori did, if one didn’t mind him saying so. “There’s one useful thing in that ability Ori has to sneak about unseen,” he continued. “He’s scoped out a bit of the competition. According to him, and mind that he’s got his own tastes, it’s simply dreadful.”
“I’d assume so,” said Dis, and was just about to lift her cup – gold-rimmed, painted with a lovely design in soft pastels – to her lips again when a door creaked open and slammed shut in the hallway. “Is your brother home?”
“Gotta run!” Nori yelled, and a familiar brown-haired blur raced by Dis’s field of vision through the doorway. “Gotta run, gotta run, Dwalin’s coming over!” His voice faded with the sound of his frantic footsteps, and then another door echoed the first slam.
Dori winced. “He’ll have this entire place falling down around our ears.”
“He’s not often so high-strung.”
Dori shook his head. “Oh, no, he’s been like this for months. It’s not like my brother to avoid thieving. I do believe he’s been buying things from the craft stalls! I’ve tried to see what everything is and he just hisses at me.”
“Like an angry cat?” Dis suggested. “Do you have any more biscuits, Dori? If I might trouble you.”
“What am I to do when my own brother decides to shut me out?” Dori continued, as if he hadn’t heard a thing. Perhaps he hadn’t; Dis was all too familiar with how selectively deaf a Dwarf could become in circumstances when he needed a good long rant. “It’s as if he’s sixty all over again, and…oh, bloody – that’s the door!” He interrupted himself in bristling frustration when the knock sounded. “Do pardon me, my dear. I have my duties.”
Dis inclined her head to let him go. Soon, she heard an all-too-familiar voice greet him at the door, and Dori’s exclamation of surprise; his tapping footsteps, and plodding ones behind him, heralded Dwalin’s entry into the sitting room. “Cousin,” said Dwalin. “Master Dori. Is Nori in?”
Dori opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly, Nori appeared in front of him and he jumped about three feet into the air. “Afternoon, brother,” said Nori with a lazy grin as Dori dusted himself off and settled like an angry hen. “I hear I’m wanted.”
“Aye, it’s m’nameday,” Dwalin said. “Yer brother invited me, Master Dori.” He looked around the room, and for the first time seemed to take in Dis’s presence. “Am I interruptin’?”
The yes couldn’t have been more obvious on Dori’s tongue. Their tea time was sacrosanct; he’d even chased Thorin away with a wooden spoon on one occasion (“those reports can wait, your Impatient Majesty!”). Nevertheless, he took in a deep breath that made Dis smile and let it out evenly. “Not at all,” he said. “Are you expecting him, Nori? Out with it, then. I won’t have your imprisonment ruin my day.”
“Imprisonment?” said Nori indignantly. “What do you take me for? I’m a changed Dwarf, I am.” He pulled on the front of his tunic and thrust his chest forward in a very fine imitation of Bilbo Baggins’s best indignant stance. “I’ve got a gift for Dwalin here. Happy nameday, Dwalin.” With that, he reached into his clothing and pulled out a small wrapped package.
Dwalin looked down at the package when Nori handed it to him, brows furrowing in confusion. “For me?” Nori nodded. “All right.” He tore off the paper, belying his thick fingers that Dis knew looked far clumsier than they were, and unfurled the gift within. A deep red scarf spilled from his fingers to dangle its thick fringe against the floor. “What’s this?”
“Happy nameday,” Nori repeated. Suddenly, he tucked his hands behind his back as if he were bashful, and looked down at the floor. “Said I wanted to court you, didn’t I? Here’s a courting gift. I know that shiny head of yours gets cold, come winter. Wrap it around. Or…or don’t, I don’t give a shite.”
“I give a shite,” Dwalin growled, and lunged forward. Dis’s heart sped up, but it turned out that Dwalin didn’t want to clap Nori in irons or wrestle him to the ground, but kiss him.
And kiss him.
Then keep kissing him.
Dori’s mouth fell open at some point during the proceedings, and only a squeak emerged before he cleared his throat and shook his head. “Excuse me,” he said, and then “Excuse me!” in the prissy tone that Dis had seen leave many a Dwarf pale with fear. “I won’t have this sort of show in my sitting room, thank you very much. Court somewhere else!”
“Come now, Dori,” Dis couldn’t help teasing, “aren’t you happy he’s found someone?”
“I certainly am not,” said Dori, “and I’ll take drastic measures if I must.” However, although he hauled both protesting parties out by their ears (“Oi! We’re busy here!”) so that he and Dis could resume tea, she knew without a doubt that he was.