Rivendell's crowded training arena was utterly silent as Kíli lay back on the sand and gripped the weighted bar that the pair of elves held suspended crosswise above his chest.

"Now remember, you said a dozen lifts," the blond one, Thalion, reminded with a grin. "If you can manage it."

Kíli barked a short laugh. "Do you think I'm a bairn? Of course I can." At his curt nod, the elves released the full weight of the bar into Kíli's arms. He flashed a grin of challenge at Thalion, and then lowered the bar to his chest and lifted once, then again.

He had been repeating this exercise for the past quarter hour, lifting successively heavier loads. Kíli supposed he was now pressing nearly twice what Tauriel herself weighed, and the astonished faces of his elven training mates proved that they were duly impressed. Oh, there was no doubt that these warriors were strong, but lithe elven muscles were not built to match the raw power of dwarven ones.

"Eight. Nine," the second elf counted.

Kíli's chest and arms were burning now, and his limbs were trembling.

"I don't think you can do it, dwarf," Thalion taunted good naturedly.

A groan of effort was the only answer Kíli could give as he lifted the bar another time.

"Ten."

Kili closed his eyes and thought of the training he and Fíli had done before the Quest. This was nothing to some of the things Dwalin had made them do some days.

"Eleven!"

Even through the rushing in his ears, Kíli could hear the collected intake of breath from his audience.

"Twelve!"

He opened his eyes and meeting Thalion's look, raised the weighted bar once more before releasing it back into the waiting hands of his companions.

"Thirteen? Now you're just showing off," Thalion said with a smirk.

Kíli went limp in the sand, laughing and gasping at once. "I've—been showing off—all morning, Pointy Ears. But just now—that—was a craftsman's dozen. What I promised."

Thalion laughed, then clasped Kíli's hand and drew the dwarf to his feet. "I grant you are honorable, as well as strong."

"I'm hungry, too," Kíli said, brushing sand from his sweaty skin. "I reckon I can outdo you at the breakfast table, as well." Someone offered him a towel, which he accepted gratefully.

"I don't doubt it!"

"You may wish to save that contest for another day," put in Daeron, who was just coming into the arena. "Your wife may need your help."

"Oh?" Kíli looked up from the towel.

Daeron smiled. "I crossed paths with your children on my way here, or rather they crossed mine, running through the gardens as if intent on some mischief. They hadn't a stitch of clothing on between them."

"Ah. Yes, I suppose Taur may want me," Kíli said. If the children were giving trouble, he would not leave her to deal with it alone.

He tossed the towel aside, pulled on the shirt another friend held out for him, and made for the arena gate. Yet as he went through, he turned back to Thalion. "Don't think you've escaped my challenge," he called, walking backwards as he spoke. "Tomorrow morning, in the dining hall! I can eat at least twice as many eggs as you!"

Back in their rooms, Kíli found Tauriel still in her nightgown. She sat curled in one of the oversized, cushioned chairs, her dreamy gaze on the sun-dappled river flowing by below the open window. As Kíli entered, she glanced up at him over the rim of her tea mug. Her smile was sweet and unconcerned.

"Good morning, love," she said.

"Morning." He regarded her for a moment, taking in her bare feet, the sleep-tangled fall of her red hair, the strap of her gown slipped down from one shoulder. Ah, she was lovely, present, and so tangibly his own.

Kíli stepped close and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "There are rumors of a pair of naked dwelflings loose in the gardens," he said. "I can only assume they're ours."

She breathed a soft laugh though her nose. "Oh, Kíli, it was a conspiracy! They refused to get dressed. As soon as I had Eydís in her clothes, Galadion was out of his. By the time I had wrestled him back into them, she was naked as a robin. So in the end I let them go. It will do them no harm."

Kíli gave a full-throated laugh. "Surely not." He tugged open the buttons on his shirt, pulled it off, started untying his trousers.

"Heavens! You don't mean to follow them?" Tauriel demanded, her tone caught between amusement and dismay.

He looked up to meet her wide-eyed stare and shook his head as he laughed at her again. Oh, she knew better than to put such a thing past him. "I fancy a dip in the stream after my exercise. Join me?"

She took another sip of tea, then set the mug aside. Unfolding her long legs, she stood and followed him down the short stair beyond their bedroom to the bathing pool below. Here the water turned in a calm eddy, cut off from the main river current by a ridge of stone. The low-hanging branch of a tree screened the place from above, lending both shade and privacy.

Kíli stepped down into the water and slipped beneath the surface. The cool river felt wonderful against his skin, still heated as he was from the exercise and the already significant warmth of the day. He tossed wet hair out of his face and turned to watch Tauriel, who still stood on the river bank, pinning up her hair. She secured a final pin, then stooped to gather the hem of her gown, and in one fluid movement, drew it over her head.

Kíli had always admired the way she undressed. There was something artful and deliberate about the way she moved, as if this were a ritual no less important for being a minor, daily one. Kíli knew he usually cast aside clothes as if they were an encumbrance, much like their children had done earlier. With her, it was always an unveiling.

Tauriel sighed happily as she came down into the pool beside him. "The water is perfect."

"Mm-hm." Kíli dipped his head under once more. "Today's going to be hot. No wonder our children chose to wear naught but their skins."

"So long as they don't climb into any fountains," she mused.

"I can make no promises, for myself or my offspring." He chuckled. "Nor should you." He could never forget her confession that, encouraged by wine and Midsummer Eve's festivities, she had once jumped into an ornamental pool in the Elvenking's palace. Indeed, he had later helped her reenact the escapade.

She said nothing, but Kíli knew by her suppressed smirk that she knew what he meant.

"I like it here in Rivendell," he told Tauriel. "We have beautiful rooms, a bath even better than the one I built for you back home." He reached up for her, his wet hand trailing droplets that caught like gems on her shoulders and breast. "Lots of elves eager to play with our children, so that I get nearly as much time as I could wish with my Thatrûna."

"Nearly?" She gave him a sweet smile before dropping down into the water out of his reach; then she set her hands on his hips and lifted herself back up to kiss him. "You still smell of sand and sweat, my love," she said, and moved past him to fetch the soap from its shelf above the water.

Kíli grinned as she returned to rub lathered hands over his shoulders; he enjoyed being bathed by her quite as much as he enjoyed anything else they got up to when they were supposed to be washing.

"I set a new training ground record this morning," he told her.

"Ah?"

"Thalion didn't believe I could press twenty-one stones' weight." He shrugged as Tauriel drew her hands down his arms. "I showed him I could."

"What does he owe you now?" she asked, amusement lifting the corner of her mouth.

He chuckled. Tauriel knew him well enough to guess that betting might have been involved. "Nothing. Bragging rights; the humiliation of having underestimated a dwarf." He spoke teasingly, for he was friendly with nearly all of the warriors of Elrond's house.

"The Khazad weren't framed like this just for show," she said, spanning his broad chest with her palms. He leaned into her, and she scratched at him with her nails, knowing that was what he liked. "Though I find you do cut a very handsome figure. Surely, twas some idle fool who first suggested dwarves are an ill-made people. Very clearly your Mahal knew what he was about."

"I'm glad you think so." In truth, he'd never needed her words to know this. Aside from that brief period of misunderstanding prior to the conception of their first child, Kíli had never doubted the physical attraction she felt for him.

"Mmm, I know so." She leaned closer so she could reach around him to scrub his back. Her strong, soft hands worked their way from his hips to his shoulder blades and then around his neck. Long fingers pressed up his nape and into his hair, drawing him to her breast as she set a kiss to his brow.

"Do I smell clean now?" he asked, closing his arms around her slender waist.

"Mm-hm." He felt her nod against him.

Kíli released her, then laughed at the soap suds he'd left on her skin. He splashed her, just as she dipped to rinse herself, and Tauriel ended up receiving a face full of water.

"Sorry, love," he said in response to her playful scowl.

Tauriel swam over to the edge of the pool and leaned back against the stone, her body suspended in the water. Oh, but she was captivating: her skin glistening under leaf-tossed shadows and a few stray strands of hair winding in fiery lines over her throat and shoulders. As she skimmed the surface of the water with her toes, Kíli caught her foot and held it.

"So, how were the children this morning, besides conspiratorial?" he asked as he pressed his thumbs over her sole. She made a sound of pleasure and nudged at him to continue.

"As excited to be here as they've been each morning for the past sennight," she said. "It makes me so happy to see them happy. You know, when we left Erebor, I thought we would be sharing the world with Galadion and Eydís. But sometimes I feel it is the other way around."

Kíli nodded. He knew the feeling; before their children, Tauriel had made him feel so.

He rubbed her feet for a few minutes more, then took a final dip under the cool river water and swam back to the steps up from the pool.

"I say we find our wayward children," he said as he climbed out and reached for his towel. "But first, breakfast."

Author's note:

I had the need to write something totally fluffy and sweet, and this fic is the result. I've put in as much cute, ridiculous fan service as I can manage.

This story belongs in the same series as So Comes Snow After Fire and Spring After Winter and Sun on the Leaves. Hmm, so if Kíli's idea of a dozen is actually 13, what does that mean for the number of children he thinks they should have?

The story of how Tauriel and Kíli jumped into a fountain in Thranduil's palace (again) is in my little fic "Strawberry Moon."

So what kind of trouble do you suppose those two dwelflings are about to get into?