Beads and Braids - Kili x reader
Type: Imagine
Pairing: Kili x reader
Summary: post BOTFA, everyone lives!AU, in which Y/N, a girl from Rohan seeking shelter in Erebor, befriends the Princes, and the mischievous Kili needs better ways of confessing his feelings.
Warnings: ‘fuck’, ‘shit’
Word Count: 2735
All italicised, non-English words are in Khuzdul, one of the main Dwarvish languages.
Y/N was no stranger to being alone, nor was she unused to being unusual. Being on the run from a dangerous league of hunter assassins that were sweeping through her hometown of Rohan, spending months trying to reach Erebor, the Mountain of Gold, then arriving only to be turned away, had taught her not to care too much about loneliness.
Sure, she’d been allowed in eventually, after she’d insisted to the stingy King Thorin Oakenshield that she had ‘absolutely no fucking interest in your goddamn gold’, but the reminder that she wasn’t wanted in Erebor still stung dully day after day, even as she attempted to bury the emotion beneath layers of stone.
Although, she was no longer completely shunned while in Erebor. The first few weeks had been difficult, especially as she was at least eight inches taller than everyone else, even as a relatively short human - Y/N was surrounded by Dwarves, and it was a transformative experience (she enjoyed being tall for a change).
But as time went on, the Dwarves became far more accepting - mostly because when Bard visited with his children, Sigrid and Tilda (who was the reason they were there, to say hello to the ‘lucky Dwarves from the toilet’, namely Dwalin, her favourite) and saw her, he spouted a whole speech on the helpfulness of humans in the Battle of the Five Armies, especially how a number of them had charged Azog’s numbers, saving the line of Durin. That made Thorin begrudgingly become kinder to her.
Y/N spent most of her days outside the cold fortress, reading old books on Dwarven culture and their previous interrelations with other relations on the ramparts or the grasses below the Mountain. It was on one of such days that she ran into someone who would change her life.
Well, Y/N didn’t run into him.
Y/N had been sitting on the ramparts, her legs swinging over the side and continually tucking her h/c hair behind her ears as the wind blew it into her face. A large book with a f/c leather cover that had stood out to her in the towering shelves of the Library was sitting in her lap, gold-leaf lettering across the front of it boldly proclaiming ‘A History of the Honourable Line of Durin’. She’d been told by Balin (a frequenter of the Library) that it was updated often with the latest triumphs of the youngest of the Line of Durin: Thorin, Fili and Kili, the Royals Under the Mountain.
Y/N wouldn’t lie, she was mostly reading it to make fun Thorin, but then again, history was interesting.
She looked up from a particularly hilarious passage about Thorin’s ‘incredible bravery and innumerable acts of service to the Throne of Erebor’ at the harsh cry of a raven. It circled around her, cawing enthusiastically with something less akin to malevolence and more to happiness in its black eyes, before flying off.
Y/N had been smiling but she frowned when she realised that the raven was not flying towards Erebor, as most did, but away from it.
Then it had to be flying away from something … Y/N connected the dots just as the door to the battlements whipped open and something slammed into her back just as she was turning around, knocking her off the ramparts.
She screamed loudly, looking at the ground beneath her and envisioning the fifty different ways she would splatter all over it.
A hand encased in a brown glove but for the fingers suddenly swung into her view, catching ahold of hers in a startlingly tight grip.
Y/N looked up, seeing a Dwarvish face that was at once familiar and entirely seperate from her small existence in Erebor, and she couldn’t put a name to him.
His brown hair reached just past his shoulders, and was not braided. Paired with his beardless, kinda attractive face (stubble did not count in Y/N’s eyes), Y/N reached the conclusion that he was still young, definitely under 100.
He was holding onto her with one of his hands and his other was held by a blonde Dwarf with much more facial hair than the former and a messy blonde mane like a lion who stood behind the battlements where she had been sitting prior to being knocked off by (presumably) one of the two.
Y/N was very impressed that the Dwarf was holding her up with one hand, as she was at least more than half a foot taller than him, but she had no energy to be focused on that emotion beyond the hot fear coursing through her veins.
“Oi! Pull!” the brown-haired Dwarf yelled, and the blonde did so, clenching his teeth and heaving, until all three of them were safe on the ramparts.
“I am so sorry for my brother’s clumsiness, Miss Y/N!” the bearded, seemingly older Dwarf apologised.
“Itkit! (Shut up!)” the younger brother hissed, giving the blonde a scathing glare. “But I do apologise, Lady Y/N.” He emphasised the title he gave her, though it was definitely not one she actually possessed.
“I’m sorry,” Y/N replied to the two enthusiastic Dwarves with confusion etched all over her face. Here they were, having knocked her off the side of a fucking Castle, calling her ‘Lady’ and apparently knowing her name when she could not match a name to either of their faces. “How do you know my name? Do I know you?”
“Oh, that’s right,” the brunette said thoughtfully, turning to his brother. “Uncle Thorin said she was new.”
“He also said she was a-”
“Oh Mahal, shut up! How many languages do I have to say that in?”
Uncle Thorin? Oh shit ....
“At your service!” they both chimed, bowing low in unison and springing back up with wide grins that made them seem a lot younger than they probably were.
“Fuck...” Y/N muttered under her breath, curtseying as low as she could. “My Princes, I apologise-”
Her embarrassed apology was cut short with a squeak flying from her mouth as she was yet again jerked up by Kili, who brushed off her f/c dress that was dirty from falling off the ramparts.
“Lady Y/N, you needn’t apologise; it is technically my fault for knocking you off the walls of Erebor!”
“Then you needn’t call me Lady Y/N,” the girl retorted, almost instantly regretting the familiarity with a royal figure, but also proud when Kili gave a loud laugh and wide smile. “I’m just Y/N.”
“Alright then, Just Y/N,” Kili teased, wiggling his eyebrows and taking her hand, kissing it gently. “On behalf of the Prince of Erebor-”
“-Princes, you little shit,” Fili interrupted, casually spinning a knife on his fingers.
“... Princes of Erebor,” Kili rolled his eyes. “Welcome, new friend.”
“You two are unbelievable,” Y/N complained, though a wide smile was affixed on her face.
“We know,” Fili and Kili replied, both still covered in flour from when they’d begun to throw it like snowballs in the middle of baking with her.
“Well, at least we salvaged-” Y/N cut herself off as she took the cake out of the oven. “Mahal. What is that?”
The cake was less a cake, and more a complete mess. Half of it looked gooey and porous, and the other half burnt. Y/N just turned to the brothers, raising an eyebrow.
They eyed each other too, shuffling their feet.
Y/N sighed. “This is why we don’t have food fights in the kitchen, guys.”
Fili and Kili had the decency to look a little sheepish as Y/N turned to dump the mess in the bin. As she did so, she glanced out the window and flinched.
“Shit! I’m meant to meet Bard soon - it’s a meeting of great importance. And I’m not ready, there is flour everywhere, my hair is a mess-”
“Well, we can handle at least one of those things,” Kili told Y/N, lightly pushing her into a chair, his hands clean of flour now. “I know a really good hairstyle for special occasions - our mother used to wear it.”
He began to run his fingers through her hair, gently untangling the knots with a brush Fili gave him (honestly, how much did that Dwarf have in his coat?) and braiding it. Y/N closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of his hands in her hair and its soothingness. Suddenly, she opened her eyes, flushing red.
Was she falling for the Prince of Erebor?
No, surely not. After all, he was a dwarf, and she a human: a human the King of Erebor didn’t exactly have a partiality towards. It would never work out.
That doesn’t mean feelings just stop, dumbass. Y/N’s brain reasoned. She rolled her eyes at herself.
“Alright, it’s done! And Fili and I will clean up the kitchen,” Kili announced, pulling her up and lightly dusting off her f/c dress, careful to avoid any areas it was improper to touch, a small hint of pink on his cheeks as he did so. Y/N pulled some of her hair around her shoulders - Kili had done several braids amongst her loose hair, most of them tied with black bands but one with a beautiful bead in it that she didn’t get a proper look at.
(A/N - imagine this hairstyle, but only one bead, and that bead has lots of jewels all in different colours)
“We’ll clean up what?” Fili protested. Kili smirked, pushing her out the door.
“We’ll see you later, Y/N!”
Y/N ran as fast as she could, considering her annoyingly impractical skirt, and she finally skidded to a stop in the snow outside the great doors, taking in who was there.
Bard bowed his head in greeting, his eldest daughter, Sigrid by his side. (Y/N had thought she had heard faint giggles from inside, meaning Tilda was hanging out with Dwalin again), Thorin stood impatiently, leaning on his sword, and next to him, keeping a petty distance was …
“My lord Thranduil,” Y/N bowed, having also read all about the infamously glamorous Elvenking of Mirkwood. “I apologise for my tardiness.”
“You are on time, Y/N,” Bard said, giving Thorin a side-eye. The damages of the Battle of the Five Armies went far beyond death.
Thorin chose to sit on a ledge that a) placed him higher than all of those present and b) allowed him to rest. Recovering from being impaled by the Pale Orc was a lengthy process, and one still far from finishing.
“What is the importance of this meeting?” Y/N asked, eager to go back to her chambers and think on the startling discoveries she’d made on what her heart told her about Kili Durin.
“The purpose, Y/N, is for this …”
After the meeting, Y/N went to leave, but Thorin called her name, stopping her.
He reached for one of the braids Kili had put in her hair, smiling kinder than she had ever seen him do so.
“Kili’s bead. So you have not tamed the Lion, but you have chosen the Fox. Loyal, yet cheeky and sweet.”
Y/N opened her mouth, confused, but Thorin kept speaking.
“I congratulate you on your courtship, Y/N. I wish you much love and happiness.”
“My King, I’m sorry, but I am not courting-”
He swept off in a majestic swirl of furs, leaving Y/N with a finger raised and her eyebrows wrinkled in confusion.
“Courting?” she wondered aloud. “What in Middle-Earth ...”
Suddenly, she recalled Thorin’s observation of ‘Kili’s bead’, and she pulled her hair in front of her face, scanning it for the singular, beautiful silver bead, with its nine differently-coloured gemstones, and some vague thought buried in the back of her brain called to her.
“That Dwarf ...” Y/N cursed colourfully, tossing her hair over her shoulder, picking up her skirts and running as fast as she could to the most familiar area of Erebor.
The Library. Shelves upon shelves, thousands stretching out further than Y/N could see from the entrance. She raced for the section on Dwarvish customs, pulling a dusty red tome titled ‘Dwarves and Their Secrets - The Rites and Customs of Their Culture’ and flipping through it, coughing as swirls of dust swam into the air.
Finding the page she was after, she slammed the open book onto a nearby table, running her finger down the page as her h/c hair fell in her face.
“That little fuck,” Y/N hissed, closing the book with a slam and sliding down one of the shelves until she sat on the floor, her arms curled around her knees, her face hidden from the world and vice verse by her h/l hair.
“So you found out,” a meek voice said, prompting Y/N to lift her head as Kili sat next to her.
“You bet your non-existent beard I did,” Y/N grumbled.
“I’m sorry,” Kili mumbled, burying his face in his hands, which were large, the same size as yours. “I didn’t know how to tell you that I liked you. I chose the coward’s way out.”
“I can understand that,” Y/N admitted. “Although telling everyone that why were courting via my hairstyle was not the smartest way of going about it.”
“Well, technically, your hairstyle doesn’t say you are dating. (A/N: this part here is completely made up) These braids in this style, paired with the loose hair actually means unrequited love. And seeing as I did your hair, and I have a matching braid-” he briefly pushed his hair behind his ear, pulling on a small braid, that was, indeed matching, even with a simpler version of the bead, with only two gems. “-it basically tells everyone that I have a crush on you. Uncle Thorin just misunderstood because he only looked at the bead, which he knows I own.”
“What do the gems mean?” Y/N asked, knowing she was avoiding the topic of Kili’s love for her and her possible love for him, but too afraid to cross that bridge.
Kili smiled nervously, already flushing from what he anticipated Y/N’s reaction to be, and he pulled the bead from her hair, pointing to each gem as he explained their meaning.
“The white one with the blue sheen - moonstone. It means patience, like how I am willing to wait for you. This pink one is morganite. It symbolises divine love and prosperity. These two are the ones that I have in my matching bead.” And Y/N saw that this was indeed true.
“The red ruby, which symbolises passion.” Kili’s cheeks looked as red as the jewel as he hurriedly moved on. “An emerald, green, which is fertility. Not only in children, but fertility in the soil that grows the flowers of success. Old wive’s tale. The purple one’s an opal - which is for emotional purity. It’s meant to guard against jealousy and anger. The garnet and the citrine - orange and the yellow - both stand for protection, though the citrine also provides prosperity and success.”
Y/N was completely entranced by his knowledge of the gems, even as he came to the last few.
“This pastel blue one is for fidelity, although I don’t think you need that, you have loads of it.” Y/N and Kili laughed together, and Kili fixed the bead back in her hair.
“Wait! You didn’t explain the last one!” Y/N protested, eager to hear more.
Kili stopped, smiling. “Oh. That’s a sapphire, which means trust, like how I’m trusting you with my heart. But I put it in there because it’s the exact colour of your eyes.”
Y/N was so touched by this last one, that he trusted her with his heart, even after she heard that it had been broken by the death of the Mirkwood elleth, Tauriel, that she threw her arms around him, squeezing him tight. On the floor, they were a similar height, and he hugged her back lightly.
“You know, Kili of the Line of Durin,” Y/N said teasingly as her arms lingered around his neck, though she pulled back so she could look him in the eye. “I think I need to thank you for the bead and the braids, because you made me realise something.”
“I realised I’m kinda in love with you.”
And hidden in the endless shelves of the library, Y/N kissed him, right there and then.
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