Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author Note: Part 7 in the 'Violet Nights' series. Warning, contains sibling incest and crossdressing. Enjoy.

SOME EVENINGS ARE INK-BLACK

Kili had realised at a young age that he'd have to find his own place in Erebor. Fili would be the big man in charge and Kili? Well, he'd be standing beside his brother of course, but he couldn't just do that. Fili knew it too – "you'll get bored and literally start climbing the walls." It was Bombur who suggested that he try working behind the bar.

"People like talking to him. And he can put on a show with a counter between him and everybody else," the older heavier dwarf explained.

Thorin raised an intrigued eyebrow and so, soon after Kili turned eighteen, he began learning at Bombur's side. It turned out that his magpie mind was good for both remembering and creating drinks and any problems he had with mental maths, the till took care of. Bombur patted him heartily on the back, a wide proud smile on his face.

"That's the way of it."

Kili grinned back and caught Fili's eye. Fili, leaning against the wall, looked fucking beautiful under the blue and green lights, his skin and hair splashed with vivid colour, his body outlined in snug leather. And he was looking at Kili like a thirsty man gazed at a water fountain. Kili swung his hips as he headed down the bar to take the next order. It brought him tips as well as his brother's undivided attention.

The job held Kili's interest and enthusiasm so he stuck beside Bofur and Bombur, manning the bar and flirting with the customers. Thorin looked pleased. Fili shoved Kili up against their flat door, dropped to his knees, and sucked down Kili's dick with worshipful loving eagerness. Kili was fairly sure that his eyes rolled back in his head. He wasn't completely certain, seeing as his brain was currently holidaying somewhere white-hot with pleasure.

"Fuck…" was all he managed to gasp out.

"If you're still talking, then I'm doing something wrong," Fili muttered with a filthy grin, mouth still full.

He spent the rest of the night making Kili entirely speechless. Bifur complained loudly about the noise the next morning.

So that was how Kili got his Erebor job. The next night, he christened a cocktail Paradise Mine; with a kick of alcohol hearty enough to make most people's eyes water. The colours were dark and inky and Fili grinned when he saw the sugar coating the lip of the glass.

"A hint, brother?"

"Down one and find out."

Kili's new job also inspired his first tattoo. Every Durin family member had at least one; in fact most of them were covered in ink. Even Ori had one, lines of beautiful broken poetry wrapped around a quill pen and a paintbrush, all dripping down his right arm. It was a gorgeous piece of work, and all thanks to Beorn, who ran a tiny hole-in-the-wall tattoo parlour a couple of streets away from Erebor. He was a great bear of a man, with a roaring laugh and enormous hands which seemed better suited to rugby than tattooing. The delicacy and deftness of them when working on skin was breath-taking.

Dis had discovered him one night; she'd never revealed the full story of that first encounter, not even to Thorin. All that was known was that she had liked and trusted the tattooist enough to commission him to ink two names onto her hip – her late husband and her late brother – enveloped in a steely spiky design that perfectly suited both her and the names. She'd shown her family, and Beorn became the only tattooist that the Durins used from then on.

Of course, like Dis's, some Durin tattoos were only ever shown to family. Covering almost all of Thorin's back was a tree, its roots twisting at the bottom and its branches spreading out. There were names in the bark – all Durins of course, including his grandparents. Kili and Fili had privately agreed that if they had their way, Bilbo's name would be there before too long.

Fili took Kili into Beorn's the first week of his new job. Beorn chuckled at the sight of them.

"At last, eh? Right then, hand it over."

The piece was simple but full of hidden meaning, like most Durin pieces, and was set for Kili's left forearm. It consisted of two cocktail glasses, one standing upright and another tipped over, spilling a wash of brightly-coloured liquid downwards. Behind the liquid waterfall were two small but perfect orange roses, one in flower and one in bud, both garnished with mint leaves. It only took one sitting and Kili sat very still after Beorn's dire warnings about what would happen if he fidgeted. Fili laughed at the look of horror on his brother's face.

Kili already had plans to add to it. Most Durin tattoos were organic, they were never really finished. There was always something more to say.

When they got home, Fili distracted him from the post-tattoo soreness by holding him down and mercilessly teasing at his nipple bars, plucking and sucking until the pleasure-pain of it was so exquisite, Kili came without even one touch to his cock. Fili looked ridiculously smug about that. When he had his strength back, Kili pounced – well, pounced as best he could with a sore wrapped arm - and returned the favour.

Kili had finally recovered from one of his largest tattoos – over his entire right pec, a bird like an eagle, fierce and wild with rings of colour around its feet that matched the colours of Erebor's sign. He celebrated by dragging Fili out shopping. It'd been too long since he'd bought anything. Fili didn't have to come, he just liked to watch.

There were some shops they were no longer welcome in. Thorin had told them to stop getting barred; they shouldn't make things so easy for Smaug.

"I'd ask if you'll ever have enough corsets, but…" Fili laughed, lounging outside the changing rooms as Kili worked through almost a rail's worth of outfits.

"But you realised you'd be shooting yourself in the balls?"

Fili snorted, a noise that turned into a cough when Kili threw back the curtain to reveal himself clad in a corset made of thick creamy material, embroidered and beautiful. It was more delicate and feminine than anything Kili usually chose, but it worked with his dark eyes and hair, it really did. Fili's expression confirmed it. Perfect.

In answer to Fili's question, Kili would never have enough corsets because he'd never have enough of mornings beginning with Fili lacing him in tight enough to leave indents, providing that delicious pinch of pain whenever he moved in just the right way. And he'd always look forward to more evenings involving Fili unlacing him and laving every inch of skin with a soothing tongue. Most importantly though, Kili would never have enough of how good wearing a corset made him feel. He hadn't found much to beat it yet.

He ended up buying a white lace bustier, along with the cream-coloured corset and several others in various shades and styles. The purple one he was definitely going to wear to Violet Nights.

By the end of the month, there were new tattoos tumbling down his forearm – braids like his brother's, a brightly-lipsticked mouth, and the name Erebor. That had always been the plan.

More than one punter shoved their phone numbers at him, sometimes down his corset, and Kili always laughed and shook his head, declaring he was 'taken, in the most permanent kind of way.' Of course some people were wickedly-bad at taking a hint and waited for Kili after he was done with his bar shift and tried to urge him onto the dance floor and there was that one time a guy twice his size with a mohawk and whiskey-confidence began some unwanted manhandling which Kili was fighting off pretty effectively until Fili appeared with one of Bilbo's friends at his shoulder – Frel? Fal! Mohawk Man got ejected pretty quickly after that, Dwalin more than happy to facilitate. Fal looked pretty tanked, bright blue glitter smeared under both eyebrows and his skin shimmering with sweat. He smirked at Kili and his brother.

"Don't throw too many out, gotta leave some for the rest of us."

"You can have him," Kili shouted back over the music.

Fal swung away into the crowd, laughingly caught up in the next wave of people, Kili and Fili already forgotten. Fili squeezed a handful of his brother's arse, making Kili startle and keen.

"That bird gets people's attention," Fili remarked, hot and heavy in Kili's ear.

Kili groaned out a laugh; it was true that his bird of prey chest piece did get attention, especially as the head and upper body, all wild and feathery, emerged perfectly from a corset. Kili loved the effect, he loved what it did to Fili, anybody else hardly mattered.

Then Fili's touch ghosted away. Generally, they behaved themselves at the club. Ever since the business with Thorin's shit of a boyfriend, they'd all been wary about how close Smaug could get to them and just how personal he could make it. Of course Smaug probably knew about them already, he wasn't stupid, he'd proven that. So Kili and Fili felt like, on some quiet private level, they were waiting for the penny to drop. Only, they couldn't live like there was an axe hanging over their heads, that wasn't living, was it? No, they just had to get on with it, the loving and the living, and they had to be careful too, keeping an eye-out. When would Smaug strike?

Maybe not tonight. Kili slithered back to the bar, grinning at Bofur's laughing leer, and got stuck in.

"How do you decide what to get tattooed?" Bilbo wanted to know, his eyes on Kili's colourful arm.

Kili, lying on a Violet Nights sofa with his head pillowed on Fili's thighs, smiled idly, his fingers tracing the beloved ink designs. They looked great, he was very proud of them. He angled his arm so that the light fell better on the images.

"I just do, everything important ends up there eventually."

Bilbo raised his eyebrows, cocking his head to get a better look. He whistled low and admiring through his teeth. "This tattooist…"

"Beorn," Kili and Fili supplied at the same time.

"Beorn. I don't know much about tattoos, but these look really good."

Fili smiled and lifted an ankle. "He's the only one a Durin goes to for a tattoo. Mine are further downstream."

Kili closed his eyes, mouth curling as he envisioned Fili's muscled legs under the ever-present leathers, one thigh adorned with a single tattoo – song lyrics and some sort of mythic warrior swinging a sword who from some angles looked like Fili but from others looked more like Kili. It was a handsome piece and the most elaborate of Fili's tattoos. Kili was the ink-happy brother; he tended to take what Fili did – piercings, tattoos - and run several miles with them. Fili tended to like the results.

"Has Uncle Thorin shown you his back piece yet?" Kili asked, almost-idly, only it wasn't idle at all. Now was the perfect time to bring it up.

Bilbo gave him a look that said he knew what Kili was doing, Kili's grin sharpened in response. Because, despite Bilbo's look, a seed had been planted and that was good news.

"You should ask him to," was all Kili added.

Bilbo made a noise that probably meant a punishing lack of dessert, a noise that got Fili jabbing a finger into Kili's ribs, yep Kili had heard it. Balls. There was a rattle of china though and a creak of springs as Bilbo got to his feet.

"Last chance for pie before the late dining crowd from Rivendell show up."

"Right here," Kili raised an arm quickly in case Bilbo was thinking of taking back the offer.

As Fili's fingers dug into his neck, massaging the sweet spot that always made Kili croon, Kili wondered, not idly at all, how long it would take Bilbo to really look at Kili's arm tattoo and realise that right at the bottom by his wrist was a vividly-etched apple pie, unmistakably baking in Bilbo's favourite china dish.

-the end