Nori puts his less-than-legal skills to good use.


Sometime later they were in the car. He didn't really pay attention, mind kept drifting in and out of conversation and Kí's impromptu karaoke. Just a week ago even he had everything all planned out, spent months saving up, weeks in the forge making the perfect beads...and now? Now he was crammed in the back of a second-hand station wagon Nori'd won in a poker game against Nasty Bill from Ferny's Refurbishing.

[To make matters worse, there was at least a 100% chance the git had cheated, too.]

[But that was Nori for you—any sight of profit and all morality went out the Mahal-damned window.]

...crammed in the back of Nori's station wagon and day-dreaming about a certain selkie, that is. He only came to when Dwalin's large hand clapped him on the back with far more force than necessary, accompanied by raucous laughter.

"And he won't even tell us who!" Kí chimed.

"It weren't that lyin' bugger, were it?" Nori asked.

"No," Gimli assured them, flushing. Not a week ago he'd planned to marry—and now none of his closest friends would dare to say his (ex) lover's name. "No it wasn't—him."

"Never liked 'im, anyways." Nori said toothily into the rearview mirror. "Nope. I told's you, I did —'E's a Blacklock. Nothin' but trouble from the start."

"I did," Ori sighed.

"Hush, you." Dwalin grunted, eliciting a shy smile from the youngest brother Ri. It was an odd sight, the two of them, all his life Dwalin had been the Mahal-may-care cousin, and now watching him melt (er, at least be somewhat civilized?) was a strange experience.

"Oy!" Nori shouted from the driver's seat. "None o' that! Dori'd have a fit if he saw you two love birds a-flirtin'."

"What Dori doesn't know won't hurt him," Ori objected.

"Fuck Dori." Dwalin grumped. The two families had known each other for years, and Ori was far past the age of it being unseemly, but Dori fussed over him constantly like a Dwarrodam the first time she caught her 20 year-old daughter sneaking out.

"All I's sayin' is—best keep it in the clan," Nori continued. "An' you—you got Firebeards and Longbeards to chose from! Ain't no need to go lookin' elsewhere. 'S trouble. All I's sayin'."

...and coming from Nori the notorious jewel thief, swindler, and all around vagabonding vagrant low-life, that was saying something.

"Don't listen to him, lad," Dwalin chuckled. "He's still upset about that Stiffbeard—what was her name again?"

"Amira," Ori piped in. "Only it was her brother and father who—"

And so Ori and Dwalin launched into the story they'd all heard a hundred times over, Nori escaping that house in Harad by rappelling down the wall with the poor girl's bedsheets, Kí adding his usual colorful commentary while Nori seethed silently all the way to his new storage unit. Gimli knew what they were doing, distracting him from Ári, and as tired and humorless as he felt at the moment he was deeply grateful. They were a strange sight, the thief, his perpetually kid brother, the adorably irresponsible cousin, and the grizzled veteran, but Mahal-damnit they were his strange bunch, and he wouldn't trade them for all the gold in Erebor.

They managed to fix his mattress on top of the car with duct tape (or "Dwarvish engineering", as Dwalin called it), and he fished the rest of the necessaries out bit by bit. Laptop. Charger. Boxes and boxes of unfolded clothes. His small forge, tools, and several heavy cases of raw materials. Still couldn't find his bloody ax, though, the great-ax Adad's Adad had carried at Azanulbizar. He rummaged through hastily stacked cardboard boxes and no small share of stretched out garbage bags, only to stop aghast.

"What in the name of Durin's sagging left—"

"Don't let Dori hear you," Dwalin grunted.

"The fuck is this?" Gimli gaped.

"Well, that there's what we types in the business like t' call a wee bit o' revenge," Nori winked. "Nothin' illegal, mind."

...revenge was an understatement. The box was overflowing with what Gimli now suspected was all the toilet paper, underwear, shoelaces, condoms, and lightbulbs Ári's apartment had held. And suddenly he was on his arse in a tight, unairconditioned storage unit surrounded by memories of the life he'd once hoped to lead, laughing until he cried.