Chapter Text
A loud snarl cuts through the peaceful scenery of playing children, the happy laughter quickly turning into fearful screams and jolting Kíli out of his daydreams.
The young skinchangers’ eyes fly open, his pupils dilating and his iris stretching, pushing the white of his eye back and replacing it with a chestnut brown color.
He shoots up from the ground where he was sitting and swirls around just when the first child starts to scream for him. His long ebony hair, adorned with white flowers is flying over his shoulder and into his face, some of the carefully picked flowers falling silently to the ground.
He pushes the two little girls that were braiding the flowers in his hair behind him and crouches protectively before them, baring his sharpening teeth to the unknown threat. A breeze carries the smell of fear to him and his nostrils flare at the sharp scent.
Kíli sees children scurrying around, the older, human children reaching for the younger ones and pulling them behind a fallen tree trunk to hide while others are running back into the village.
Some of the smallest children are screaming fearful Fíli’s name and without a second thought he is running in the direction he last saw the blond dwarf before he got dragged away by two dwarven children.
Kíli sees a flash of bright hair and a glimpse of the brown tunic Fíli is wearing before the golden haired dwarf vanishes almost completely under a familiar, slender grey wolf.
Lési, Kíli thinks with a deep growl.
She is the daughter of Bérin, Alpha of the pack that lives in the Hills of Evendim; and unfortunately she is also Kíli’s cousin.
Kíli was never fond of her. She is clingy and arrogant and always looks down on others and ridicules them, but to Fíli she always is especially mean when she comes into their village for a visit with her father. And Kíli hates her for that. Because Fíli is wonderful and kind-hearted and beautiful and Kíli would do anything just to see the golden haired dwarf smile.
Since he came back from his six-month trip that every maturing skinchanger has to go on, to learn about the world and maybe search for a potential mate, he feels drawn to Fíli, well more than before. He knew that he was going to miss the blond dwarf, they’ve never been apart long since the day they had met, but he didn’t expect to miss Fíli so much that his first thoughts in the morning and his last in the evening strayed to his fierce lion.
He noticed that he missed Fíli’s laughter, the rasp in Fíli’s voice when he wakes up bleary eyed with his hair falling over his shoulders like a golden waterfall and wishes him a ‘Good morning’ and he especially missed to cuddle (be it dwarf or wolf) with the older dwarf.
There was really nothing he didn’t miss about Fíli and it made the time apart from home harder for him.
Sometimes he felt irritated that he missed the older dwarf more than he missed his father or the rest of his pack, but when he stumbled over a peculiar old man who claimed to be a wizard in the outskirts of Bree (who also insisted on accompanying him for a while- in the end Kíli was stuck with the wizard for almost two month and he never encountered this much trouble before in his life and silently vowed to never travel with a wizard again) and asked him if he already found his One (or his mate like his kind calls them) and Kíli’s thoughts immediately went towards Fíli and he realized how stupid he had been.
Fíli, his bright Fíli, is his mate.
When he returned a few weeks ago and all but threw himself at the laughing blond, inhaling his mates’ lovely scent he was ready to tell Fíli of his feelings for him, but with the interruption of his family barreling into them to welcome him back he lost all of his nerves.
And then he never really got the chance (or worked up the nerve) to tell Fíli and with Lési being there he knew that he wouldn’t get any chance in the near future to talk to the blond alone with her following him everywhere.
Kíli doesn’t know how often he told her off, to leave them alone and stop insulting his friend, but now, with attacking Fíli physically she crossed the line once and for all and now he will show her what will happen when someone hurts his family.
His rage mingles with fear when he sees Lési’s aggressive moves. He knows what damage their claws and fangs can cause, having seen it often enough on hunting trips when they tear into their prey. And it doesn’t matter that Lési is scrawnier than most of his kind, she is still stronger than a teenage-dwarf and her teeth are deadly if given the right opportunity.
Kíli’s heart thunders in his chest, heat licking through his entire body and a red haze clouds his vision, and then, in the blink of an eye his body transforms, the dark fur that’s a common trait in the Durin line covering his stretching and changing body.
He runs past the last children, seeing how Lési snaps for Fíli’s face and how the blond struggles to keep her away from him, blood already coating his linen shirt from deep scratches on his chest and arms.
With an angry snarl Kíli jumps at the grey wolf, tearing her forcefully away from his mate and rolling them around to pin Lési beneath him. He barely avoids a bite to his throat but with her body suddenly twisting she manages to get a hold of him and closes her powerful jaw around his shoulder, white, knife-like teeth piercing his skin and painting them in a deep red.
Kíli growls, partly in annoyance and partly in pain while the heavy smell of his blood fills the air. Over his thundering heartbeat and the she-wolfs snarling he can hear Fíli screaming his name.
His paws scrape over the ground when he pushes forward, his left leg and back throbbing with pain but he keeps moving until he can roll them around and manages to break free of Lési’s painful hold, finally being able to pin her beneath him.
Quickly the dark furred skinchanger takes advantage of Lési’s exposed throat, his teeth closing threateningly around her neck and presses his fangs warningly into her skin without drawing blood yet.
At first the she-wolf tries to break out of his grip but when he growls again and increases the pressure on her throat, blood now seeping in thick droplets into her grey fur, she sags down and exposes with a whine her belly, submitting herself to the young alpha wolf.
Satisfied with her submission he loosens his hold until his canines no longer penetrate her skin but he keeps his jaws firmly locked around her, not giving her any chance to flee. He wants to see justice done to her for attacking someone without reason, and a minor no less, and waits for one of his pack to arrive as the commotion surely reached the others in the village by now.
“Kíli!” Fíli calls concerned, taking a hesitant step towards the wolves, not sure if it’s a good idea to go near Lési, because what if she decides to finish what she started and hurts Kíli more in the process of getting to him?
Fíli watches silently with a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach how the crimson blood, barely visible in the dark fur but glistering sinister in the light brown blotches on Kíli’s front, drops down onto a ripped flower crown and stains the once beautiful flowers in a deep red.
“That was the last one, laddie.” Oin mutters and puts a good amount of the healing salve on the neatly stitched wound before wrapping the arm in a few layers of white bandages.
Fíli nods gratefully but hisses at the burning sensation of the salve, his grip on Frérin’s hand momentarily tightening and making his uncle wince in pain.
“I’ll give you some herbal tea that you should drink in the morning and evening for the pain and a salve that needs to be put on the wounds three times a day.” The healer says while bustling around the small room to retrieve the herbs and giving them to the older blond, “Frérin, I trust you to see that the wound is cleaned every day and to keep a close eye on it for possible infection.”
“Of course, Oin. And thank you for your help.” Frérin bows his head in thanks and takes the ointment and the small leather pouch filled with herbs from Oin, his sapphire blue eyes traveling to his edgy nephew.
“Can I see Kíli now?” the young dwarf asks anxiously and looks at the closed door, his mind traveling constantly to his injured One. (Not that Kíli knows about his feelings but after today he does not want to keep them a secret for much longer)
He feels unsettled not to be at Kíli’s side, especially when he’s sick or injured.
He saw the wound on Kíli’s shoulder when he changed back, and he remembers the rivers of blood flowing down the brunet’s arm and back, drenching Fíli’s quickly offered tunic with the red liquid and leaving him sick with worry.
Fíli remembers the relief when he saw his uncle running towards him, smudges of soot on his face and arms from being called from the forge by the children, his broad sword glinting dangerously in the sun.
He recalls the need to shout at Frérin to hurry, that Kíli needed help, but the sudden sound of loud, angry growling of wolves kept him from making any noises.
Wide-eyed he turned around, his stormy blue eyes fixing on three quickly approaching figures behind Kíli and Lési.
Three huge wolves ran towards their youngest family member with high speed, coming out of the forest which is not far from the village and perfect for hunting game.
Fíli recognized them immediately. It was Kíli’s father and Alpha-wolf Thorin, followed by his uncle Dwalin and Nori.
Thorin, a magnificent black wolf with intelligent, blue glowing eyes was the first to reach his son; and just when the alpha bared his sharp teeth and snarled at the pair on the ground his uncle Frérin was there and engulfed him in a tight hug, blocking his view from the group of skinchangers and everything that was about to happen.
Fíli felt torn between wanting to stay in Frérin’s arms until everything was over and racing to Kíli to make sure that he’s alright.
But in the end it did not matter.
The second Frérin loosened his grip on Fíli and the younger blond saw that Kíli changed back into a dwarf and saw the blood he ran to the brunet and shed out of his outer tunic, pressing the cloth quickly on the heavily bleeding wound to staunch the blood flow and not caring for Kíli’s nudeness.
Frantically he mumbled apologies, blaming himself for the injuries Kíli sustained and ignored the brunet’s concerned questions and the other wolves around him who held Lési back.
He should have ignored Lési and her taunting but something in him snapped when she started to talk about her marriage to his Kíli, his One.
It was a ridiculous thought. Kíli would never marry her. And when he plainly told her that, how could he have known that she would try and rip his throat out.
And then Kíli, the reckless idiot, jumped in to save him and got hurt.
*
Fíli ignored Kíli’s frantically attempts to look at his wounds, batting his hands away when they hindered him at pressing the cloth firmly onto the shoulder, shushing the brunet gently and telling Kíli that his injury was way more serious than Fíli’s scratches.
The blond remembers the twitch on Kíli’s lips when he finally got a good look at the scratches on his arms and chest, his blood slowly trickling into his white shirt. With concerned eyes Kíli reached for Fíli again, his eyes gleaming in the light chestnut brown that he only ever obtained when he was in his wolf form, and a whine escaped his lips when Fíli pushed his good arm away again.
Fíli’s heart broke a little when Kíli kept making those pitiful, whimpering sounds and he could no longer ignore the skinchangers’ concerns for him.
Fíli changed the angle of his hand on the bleeding wound and tilted his head a bit to look into Kíli’s with distress widened eyes, and gently cupped the younger’s cheek in his hand, smudging blood on the still burning skin.
“It’s all right, Kee… I’m all right. You saved me.” He whispered, pressing their brows together while looking deeply into his One’s eyes. “I’m all right.”
Kíli calmed visibly down after this, even accepted a pair of trousers from Frérin but refused to let go of the blond dwarfs’ hand after putting them on.
But as soon as they arrived at the infirmary, escorted by his uncle Frérin and a ginger colored wolf- Kíli rolled his eyes at that but refrained from saying anything when Nori growled at him and Fíli secretly wondering like so often what they are telling each other- Oin put them into different rooms and Kíli’s worry spiked again.
The brunet had to be dragged away by Nori and another healer while Frérin pushed the younger blond into one of the empty rooms, shouting and pleading to stay with the blond dwarf.
It was visible on Frérin’s face how reluctant he was to follow Oin’s orders to separate them, the young dwarves having never been forced apart when either of them was sick or hurt; they always stayed with the other until it was clear that the wound was treated well or the worst of the sickness was over. Since they met as dwarflings they were always seen together and never without each other, there was no Fíli without his moon and no Kíli without his sun.
In the end Fíli received an apologetic look from his uncle and was guided into one of the empty rooms, his own pleading brushed off with the explanation that it’s for the best for now.
*
“Please, let me see him?” Fíli looks with pleading eyes first at the old healer and then at his golden-haired uncle who only nods with a knowing grin on his lips.
“You may see him now. I’m quite certain that he is already waiting for you outside, impatient as the lad is.” Oin nods and shakes his head with a smile when the young dwarf is by the door in a flash. “And be careful with your stitches!” The healer shouts after him but Fíli barely registers it.
“Kíl- oof!”
The brunet throws himself at Fíli when he’s barely out of the door, wrapping his good arm around the blond and burying his nose in the crook of Fíli’s neck, inhaling Fíli’s scent like a drowning man desperate for air.
“Kíli!” Fíli staggers back but catches quickly his footing before he can bump against the doorframe, his arms closing around the shaking skinchanger and pulling him close against his aching chest.
Whispering Kíli’s name Fíli holds the brunet close and moves one hand to card softly through the dark tresses. He listens to Kíli’s hitching breaths, soothes with gentle hands and words the brunet’s recurred worry and hopes that Kíli can’t hear the loud hammering of his heart.
He hears Frérin laughing quietly in the background but it’s quickly silenced by a slap followed by the older blond’s yelp. Fíli grins to himself and listens how Oin drags Frérin out of the room and down the hall.
The freshly stitched wounds on his arms and chest begin to hurt after seconds of holding the other close and Fíli images that it can’t feel better for Kíli whose injured shoulder is pressed tightly against the blond.
Unwilling but out of concern for the younger Fíli loosens his hold on the brunet and pulls back, earning promptly an unhappy whine from Kíli.
“Kíli, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not!” Kíli digs his fingers into the dark tunic Fíli is wearing, looking at the blond with wide eyes. “Please, Fee. You’re not hurting me.”
Skeptically Fíli looks at the slightly taller dwarf, his eyes gazing over the bandages that are peeking out from under his blue v-neck shirt and the sling that supports Kíli’s left arm.
“Fíli, I promise. The healer lass gave me some poppy milk and now I only feel a faint tingling in my shoulder.” The brunet explains while his hand tugs absently on Fíli’s tunic and bites on his lip when the blond doesn’t pull him closer again.
Closing his eyes in defeat Kíli lowers his head to rest it on Fíli’s shoulder, hiding the different emotions that are running over his face.
“Kíli?” Sensing the sudden change of mood Fíli looks worried at his younger friend.
“I- I was so scared… when I smelled your blood and saw Lési above you… I thought I was about to lose you.” Kíli says quietly, his voice laced with fear and pain. “I thought I would lose my Mate before I got the chance to tell you how much you mean to me.”
Fíli’s world stutters to a halt, his breath catching in his throat. His eyes widen in surprise at Kíli’s words and his heart begins to flutter in joy.
Kíli, his One, just told him that he is his One as well. Since he found out a year ago that the brunet skinchanger, his best friend since they were dwarflings, is his One he had the fear that Kíli would not feel the same for him.
He asked Ori - just out of curiosity of course, that had nothing to do with his recent discovery of his changed feelings for the brunet- if skinchangers’ does have a One too and if they recognize each other on first sight like men, dwarves and elves do.
The answer “Not quite,” was not what he had expected. “We call them Mates and we are drawn to them by their unique scent, but you could say that we know it on the first smell… well most of the time anyway,” the redhead explained with a mischievous grin and enthusiastically told him a few stories about how some pairs found each other on their journey through Middle Earth.
Later Fíli told his mother about his feeling for Kíli (he doesn’t trust his uncle with such an important secret, Frérin would probably have tried to play matchmaker or would have told Thorin about his feelings for his son and he truly did not want to know the outcome of that) troubled that he might not be Kíli’s Mate.
His mother told him then calmly that he did not need to worry about his fear that Kíli would not feel the same. “One’s always find each other my gem, be they dwarf or a magical creature. But sometimes such things need time and you two are still young, not even of age yet,” she said while she was combing his hair. “But do not fret, everyone can see that you two are made for each other.”
“Kíli…” Fíli whispers, dropping one hand on the soft curve of the brunet’s waist while his other hand grabs softly Kíli’s stubbled chin, turning his head to look into his eyes. “Is this true? Am I truly your Mate?”
Shocked at his own words Kíli blushes. He did not intend to blurt that out. He wanted to confess his love for the blond dwarf when - well, when it would feel right, like when they cuddle in front of the fire or share some sweet rolls or when he braids Fíli’s hair. But blurting it out while standing in the hall of the infirmary was definitively not how he imaged it would be.
Carefully Kíli lifts his rich brown eyes, the red on his cheeks spreading to his ears when he catches Fíli’s intense gaze.
“Yes, you’re my Mate, Fíli.” Kíli repeats with more confidence in his voice, his eyes shifting between looking into the blonds’ compelling, crystal clear blue eyes and his temptingly curved lips.
Heat flutters through Fíli’s stomach at the younger’s’ words, a happy laugh escaping his lips and impulsively he closes the short gap between them, pressing their lips together.
Kíli, surprised at the sudden feeling of warm lips on his and Fíli’s mustache braids slapping against his chin, flinches back before realizing what’s happening and crashing their lips back together.
Fisting his free hand in Fíli’s golden hair Kíli deepens their kiss, leaving them both breathless when they part for air.
“I wanted to do this for weeks.” Kíli confesses with a dazed smile, placing a kiss on Fíli’s lips that lets the butterflies fly in his stomach and shoots tingles down his spine.
“Me, too.” The fair-haired dwarf admits and pulls Kíli flush against his body, allowing the skinchanger to nuzzle into his neck.
“I love you, my little wolf.” Fíli mumbles, saying the words that burned on his tongue for month for the first time out loud.
“I love you too, my golden Fee.”
“Will you tell me what happened?” Kíli asks on their way to the skinchangers’ home, brown eyes looking questioningly at the blond walking proudly beside him, their fingers intertwined. “Why did she attack you?”
“I told her that you would never marry her.” Fíli answers after a short pause of comfortable silence and then laughs at Kíli’s indignant huff of “Never”.
“The only dwarf I’m going to marry is you, âzyungâl.”