AN: I was going to write some fluff to go along with Timshel. You know, give poor Dís and Dwalin a break. And I swear, I really did try. But what happened was kind of the opposite of that.
Spoilers: The Hobbit
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not mine at all.
Rating: Teen? Is there something between T and M? We'll say M to be safe.
Warnings: Canon compliant character death.
Characters/Pairing: Dís/Dwalin, Dís, Dwalin, Thorin, Balin, Fíli, Kíli, Glóin, Glóin's wife, Óin
Summary: Five times Dís and Dwalin make out and one time they don't.
Whispers In The Dark
I.
They were young, once, though they had never been young in this place. They'd come here wearied and humbled, with dragon-fire at their heels, and Thorin had determined that it would never be their home. But Thorin is gone, now, long given back to the stone, and in the evenings, when the sun is right, Ered Luin isn't so bad.
Dwalin walks the paths between the mountains Blue and Lonely in the name of the King, though the name is different from the one he'd hoped to serve. He is older now, and so no one questions when he stays longer in one than in the other. His rooms in Erebor are hung with gold-threaded tapestries, and if pressed, he might even be able to describe the sagas they depict. But his heart is in the simpler halls, where Dís holds the remnants of her brother's court.
He comes to them in the rain, this time, with tired ponies and straggling dwarrows. They've had a decent time on the road, though the Beornings' tolls have not lessened. The ponies look forward to rest and dry hay. The dwarrows are mostly apprentice miners, sent to learn their craft in iron before they are trusted with gold and gems. All are sodden and worn out, and the firelit windows that guide them over the last few miles of their journey are welcome beacons.
Dwalin's step lightens with every pace, and the other guardsmen smile. They're young, too soft-footed to live always under stone, though most are more than able at other crafts besides. Dwalin is the only career fighter among them, and they admire him for it. Many have made this trek before, and when they finally arrive, they take Dwalin's pony as they lead the newcomers to the stables. Dwalin enters the main hall first, and alone.
She waits in a wooden chair at the head of the table. Dinner is already well underway. The raven gave word of their coming, but the rain had slowed them down, and he doesn't begrudge a small welcome. He hands off his furs, heavy with water, and rubs his face as he walks towards her. He feels his years in his knees, and his sight is not what it once was, but he can see her smile well enough.
"My lady," he says, and bows.
"Welcome home," she says. Then she kisses him, with all the world to see, and he is.
II.
They talk for weeks, it seems, catching up on all the years they have missed because of honour and duty. For the first time in decades, they aren't needed for anything, and it would almost be a holiday, were not the cost so high.
They're well through the hard fire of grief now, feelings banked and added to the smouldering ache they've carried for so many of their days. They heal around those scars, growing in new directions as the light of each other calls to them. It gets to be so common, their togetherness, that one night he forgets himself, something he has not done in an Age, and kisses her.
He means to pull away, he really does, but he's forgotten how well they fit together, how the taste of her mouth under his lights his blood on fire in a way that nothing else ever can. He just needs one moment, just a spark and a flash, and he will be content again.
Then her hands twine into his beard, holding him where he is, and the fire roars.
They've been sitting on the rug before the hearth. It's cold inside the Mountain, and somehow draughty. Though they have shared a bed every night since the funeral, they've kept well-enough to themselves.
All of that is gone, now, as Dís moves to straddle his hips, never relinquishing his mouth or his beard. They are both lightly clad, in spite of the chill, because they've furs aplenty. Dís throws them aside as she moves, and Dwalin doesn't even notice if the temperature drops because Smaug could resurrect and light the entire world aflame, and he might not see it.
She pulls at his tunic, breaking the kiss long enough to slide the linen over his head. She backs up expectantly, but he is far too accustomed to holding back, and it is not until she growls at him that his hands begin to move.
He takes a moment to look at her when they are both bare and once again sitting before the fire. Maker save him, he has never understood the fools who cannot tell the males and females of his kind apart. Dís is older, of course, but she is as hard and as perfect as she has ever been, and it strikes him, like the heaviest blow he's ever taken in battle, that he loves her with a fierceness he can never put words to.
And then she lies back upon the furs and pulls him after her, her hands busy between them until he is ready to give her what she wants.
In the hearth, the fire is as steady as it ever was.
III.
For the first two weeks, Dwalin is convinced that the only way he's ever going to hold Kili for more than two hammer strokes is if he steals him in the dead of night. Of course, he can't explain it to Thorin (nor to Glóin, who definitely has that look in his eyes as he cradles the badger against his chest), can't give words to why he needs to hold the baby, but it is slowly driving him mad.
At the end of the second week, Kili comes down with colic, and will not quiet unless he is held.
"Here," Dwalin says, when he's certain that Dís hasn't slept in three days and they have finished their four meal in a row of what passes for cooking when Thorin is left in charge of commons. "Give him to me."
Dís does not protest, and when Thorin suggests that she take the chance to sleep, she barely musters a response.
So Dwalin finds himself alone in the sitting room with the dark-haired dwarfling he cannot think of as his own, no matter how much he wants to. It's enough, for now, to hold him, to keep him from crying and to let him get what rest he can while his mother does the same.
Kili stares up at him, dark eyes wide, and face dominated by the Durin nose they all share. He's worked his hands free of the swaddling, which Dwalin supposes is a good sign of strength early on, and Dwalin takes the time to look over his fingers. They are so, so tiny, but well-formed and proportioned. They can't yet clasp even the lightest play hammer, but Dwalin has no doubt that there will be plenty of time for that later.
Kili's fingers close around one of Dwalin's, a tiny grasp that nearly stops his breath, and he leans over to kiss the lad on his nose.
"You will be a terror," he says. "You and your brother, both. I'm glad it will be Thorin's place to discipline you, though. I've a mind to spoil the pair of you rotten."
He shifts in the chair, slouching back a little bit, and Kili sprawls happily on his chest. Dwalin starts to tell him stories, nothing too scary, of course, but the funny tales that Thorin would have his hide for telling, even though there's no way the badger will remember them. It's warm before Dís's fire, and quiet but for the sound of his voice, and before long they're both nodding off.
When Dís wakes to a silent house in the silver hours of the morning, she goes to find her newest son, and finds him quietly pulling at the loose threads of Dwalin's tunic, borne up and down by the great bellows of his chest, and serenaded by some truly ear-splitting snores. She presses her lips to Dwalin's, softly, and then again to his forehead, right above the line of his scar, and so lightly that he does not even stir.
In his whole life, it is the only time Kili ever sees his parents kiss.
IV.
Dís's second pregnancy is both easier and more difficult than her first.
It is easier because she knows what to expect. She knows that her body is not betraying her, that this is the way it happens. They are more settled this time, and her cousin's wife is remarkably level-headed, for one who has not yet borne a babe herself.
But it is winter, and everything is scarce. She cannot stay warm enough, and she is always hungry. She knows that Thorin and Dwalin are both cutting their portions of meat on to her plate to make up for what she gives of her own to Fíli, and she wishes she could find the wherewithal to stop them, but she is too grateful for it.
Three weeks past Yule, there is a bright day at last, and Dwalin sets out hunting almost before the sun has cleared the rise. Óin watches him go, a troubled expression on his face as he keeps one eye on his cousin and another on the sky, but he says nothing. Afterwards, Dís will wonder if it because he is so often ignored.
The storm that comes howling down the mountain side shortly after noontime is sudden and vicious. The sky goes dark and the wind picks up like flint struck to tinder. Thorin hastens to bring Fíli back from the forge, where, young as he is, the badger is already fascinated by the sights and sounds of dwarvish making, and knows as soon as he sees his sister's face that Dwalin has not yet returned.
Then passes the longest afternoon since Dís was forced to wait for news from Azanulbizar. The wind shrieks as they all huddle next to the fire, and it gets to be the true dark of night, and still Dwalin does not come. At long last, there is a thump against the door, like a body falling against the wood, and Óin springs to action.
"Get him into his bed," he orders, and Thorin and Glóin hurry to obey. "Heat water," he tells his brother's wife, "And Dís, if you will start while I fetch my things."
Thorin and Glóin half carry, half drag the nearly unconscious Dwalin into the room he shares with his brother, when both are home. Fíli starts to cry, and no one can be spared to soothe him, until he is called to kitchen to help with the water. Dís takes her belt knife and begins to cut away the frozen ties on Dwalins clothes, sending her brother and cousin for more wood for the fire.
When she is alone, she stops trying to hold back the tears she has kept inside since the storm began.
"What did I tell you about leaving us?" she hisses at him. "How could you be so foolish?"
He's trying to say something, but his throat is too dry to speak. His face is blue and his hands are a dreadful white when she cuts his gloves off.
"Never do this to me again, do you understand?" she says, and then she kisses him because she hadn't done in so long, and she nearly lost him, and sometimes, sometimes, life is just too fragile for duty and honour, and all their many secrets.
He barely responds, frozen by ice and by the fire of her anger. His hand brushes against her belly, just as the babe kicks. His fingers move, so cold she feels them through the fabric of her dress, but they move, and that means that Óin might save them.
There is a cough from behind her, and she turns, drying her eyes, to find Óin standing there, his arms full of extra blankets and his apothecary bag.
"We'll set him right, lass," he says, and they set to work.
It's hours later before Dwalin wakes up for long enough to tell Thorin about the hart he'd left lying on the doorstep. It's nearly frozen solid by then, and is rather pathetically thin at that, but Glóin's knife is sharp, and he cuts out the liver and the heart easily enough before setting in to dress the rest, despite the cold.
It nearly chokes her, as she chews the liver; cooked rare to preserve as much of its worth as they can, but she eats it all. They have not so much that she can waste anything, no matter what the cost. She watches over Dwalin, who sleeps out the storm under a mound of blankets, with Fíli pressed against him because the boy would sleep nowhere else.
The babe kicks again, and Dís prays for spring.
V.
He realizes almost as soon as she agrees that he hadn't really given thought to the practicalities. He can't court her, obviously, or do this any of the ways he has dreamed about, when he still allowed himself to dream such things, and while he understands the mechanics of the actual act, he's less clear on what steps should be taken to ensure, well, the desired results. In the end, he decides that she managed well enough when she had Fíli, and resolves to leave complications to her.
Dís's solution is remarkably simple. She arranges for Fíli to become enamoured with the smithy Thorin has established, and under the guise of preparing the lad for his eventual apprenticeship, convinces her brother to take Fíli out of the house for several hours a day. Óin and Glóin have gone off on their first summer trade route, taking Glóin's wife and Balin with them. It's all very efficient.
Weeks pass, and the traders return, though Balin has stayed abroad with the hope of maintaining better contact with their allies. Dís says nothing to anyone. The summer is hot. The mines are not yet producing as well as might be desired and the crops that grow are parched in the field. Glóin plans a longer autumn route, hoping to trade enough to get them through the winter. No one says it, but they know it will be a hard one, even without Óin's portents. Perhaps it is for the best that Dwalin has been unsuccessful.
The autumn sees them alone again, Thorin gone to meet with kin in the north and the others off in desperate hope to trade. Dís comes to his bed again, without discussion.
It's not cold, exactly, though it is rather methodical. It is easier if they do not speak, for example, and if he remembers not to reach for her when they are done. On the rare occasions she falls asleep in his bed, he stays alert until he knows he must wake her, to send her on her way. When it happens, she stays away from him for at least a day, and his dreams are haunted by whispers of things he can almost grasp, but never have.
The last time is different. She comes to him as soon as Fíli has gone to bed, and she smiles and teases, and takes her time. She kisses him, and encourages him, and he forgets everything he has always promised himself he will remember. That last time, that last time, she is his.
One month later, when Óin and Glóin have returned and Thorin is back from his rounds, Dís stands at dinner and announces she carries another child for the Line of Durin. There is celebration in the hall, and if Thorin looks at him for a fraction of a second longer than he should do, they never speak of it. Dwalin tells himself that it was that last time, the time when they kissed, and smiled like true lovers, and fell asleep together like they do in his dreams.
He always knows it is a lie.
And one time they don't…
They are young, now, and gold and gems shine in everything they touch. He might wander, if war calls, and she will explore the Mountain to its roots, but she will always have his heart, and he will always find his way back to her side. They speak no promises, for they had no need to.
They will always have the Mountain, and each other.
finis
Gravity_Not_Included, April 13, 2013