Chapter Eleven

Tauriel was amazing, Kili decided.

He had been leery of her, at first, despite her initial offer of friendship. He hadn't been able to shake the look of disdain she had given him in the grocery store. That hadn't lasted long, though, because as soon as Tauriel realized he didn't trust her friendship, she had pulled him aside one morning to ask him why.

Kili had shrugged. "You didn't really seem to want to be my friend when we first met."

"That was before you stood up to the class bullies for a boy you had just met," she had explained.

"Why would you care?" he had asked in confusion. "You never cared that they picked up Faramir before."

"Just because I didn't do anything doesn't mean I didn't care!" was her heated response. "Them picking on Faramir meant they weren't picking on Legolas though," she had admitted in a smaller voice.

He hadn't been able to argue against that. Kili could understand her protecting her brother. He didn't think he would do the same thing in the same situation, but maybe it was different when you and your brother were in the same grade. If a kid were picking on Frodo, Kili was fairly certain that he and Fili would be able to scare the kid into leave their little brother alone without having to redirect him to a different target. And he couldn't even imagine someone picking on Fili, let alone how he would react to it.

Since their talk, he had decided to wholehearted embrace friendship with both Tauriel and Legolas, the same as he had with Faramir and Gimli. And, to the somewhat chagrin of Legolas, Faramir, and Gimli, he and Tauriel got on like a house on fire.

Tauriel, with Kili's infectious personality as an influence, was every bit as curious as he was. The difference, he was quick to realize, was that the redhead was truly fearless. Where Kili might be hesitant to ask certain questions to certain people, Tauriel had no such restraint. And when Kili might decide against an experiment thinking it was too risky, Tauriel dived right in.

Which meant, of course, that Kili dove right in after her.

Faramir, Legolas, and Gimli usually shuffled along after them, joining in on their tamer exploits, attempting to do damage control when things got somewhat out of hand.

Luckily, there weren't many opportunities for too many dangerous stunts, though Tauriel and Kili still found ways to push things.

Faramir had gotten particularly nervous when they decided to see if they could get someone to swing over the bar of the swing set. Kili had managed to push Tauriel so high that the chain was nearly perpendicular to the ground before Gimli, taking a look at Faramir's antsy face, put his foot down and made them stop.

Both Faramir and Legolas had shot Gimli a grateful look when Kili and Tauriel immediately stopped upon noticing their friends' discomfort.

For some reason, though, Fili didn't seem to like Tauriel, which Kili thought was supremely unfair of him because he had never even met her.

"You should've seen it, Fili!" Kili gushed, recounting the swinging experiment they had tried. "Tauriel got so far off the ground! She looked like she was flying! It was awesome!"

"Mmhm," he replied absentmindedly, not even looking at Kili and focusing instead on the apple he was munching on.

"And Tauriel had this great idea about how to figure out how hot air balloons work!" he went on.

"I bet Tauriel is just a fountain of good ideas," Fili said sardonically.

Kili frowned in annoyance. "What's wrong with you?"

"Maybe I'm tired of hearing how wonderful Tauriel is," he snapped, shooting Kili an irritated look.

"What's wrong with Tauriel?" he asked, offended on his friend's behalf and a little hurt at Fili's harsh words.

"She's reckless!" Fili exclaimed. "And she makes you reckless too! One or both of you are going to get hurt one of these days."

"We're not going to get hurt," Kili retorted with a roll of his eyes. "We're careful."

"Kili, you just told me that you both thought it was a good idea to see if you could swing Tauriel all the way around the swing set. What part of that sounds careful?" Fili asked incredulously.

"It was fun! No one got hurt!" he replied with humph.

"It's always fun until someone gets hurt!"

"Why do you have to try and be so grown up?" Kili asked in exasperation. "You're only a year older than me. It's not like you know so much, you know."

Fili sighed in defeat. "I just worry about you, Kili. I'd be really sad if something happened to you."

Kili's annoyance at the other boy drained out of him. He closed the distance between them on the couch and threw his arms around Fili in an awkward hug and buried his face in the side of his neck. "Nothing's going to happen to me."

"It better not," Fili said grumpily.

"Kili!" Bilbo called from the kitchen before he could ask Fili why he was still so moody. He reluctantly let go of the blond and made his way to the kitchen.

"Yes, Dad?"

Bilbo smiled at him as he put a casserole dish in the oven. "I just got off the phone with Mr. Bofur," he informed. "Ori would like you to come spend the weekend with him. Seems like he's been missing you since you don't come to the bakery after school anymore."

"Okay!" he said cheerily. He frowned, though, as he realized something. "Just me? Not Fili too?"

"The invitation was just for you," his dad said carefully while setting the oven timer.

Kili scrunched up his face in confusion. "I thought Ori liked Fili?"

"Of course he does!" Bilbo assured him, turning around to face him. "But I think he sometimes misses when it was just you and him. You and Fili do tend to get caught up in each other, you know?"

He nodded slowly. That was true. He stuck close to Fili whenever they were with each other, but they both tried their best not to exclude others! They had tried to include Ori as much as possible when Bilbo and Kili were still living above the bakery, and though he was still little, they tried to include Frodo as much as possible as well. Kili didn't want to be a bad friend or brother by favoring Fili all the time. And if Ori wanted to spend some time with him without Fili, well, he could do that. It was just…

"The entire weekend?" he asked morosely.

"You've gone longer without seeing Fili," his dad said with a roll of his eyes, turning his attention to chopping vegetables for a salad.

"Not out of choice," he pointed out with a pout.

"Kili," Bilbo said gently, bending down slightly to look him in the eye. "You don't have to go if you don't want to. But you see Fili all the time and he's not going anywhere. If you want to keep Ori's friendship, you're going to have to put effort into it now. After all, you don't go to the same school and you don't see him at the bakery anymore."

"I do want to be Ori's friend," Kili insisted. And he did miss spending time with the younger boy. "I guess a weekend there could be fun."

"That's the spirit," his dad approved.

Fili didn't think it was a bad idea either.

"You'll have fun with Ori," he said with a smile. "Fun that won't run the risk of bodily injury."

Kili scowled at that, knowing it was a further dig at Tauriel. He thought that Fili would lay off after they talked earlier. Apparently he was wrong. Maybe after a weekend at Ori's, Fili wouldn't annoy him as much about his new friends.

He tried to not let his annoyance with Fili spoil his time with Ori. He plastered on a grin and listened to the younger boy attentively as he told him about his new teacher and how the older kids in his class had finally stopped treating him like a little kid, which was an improvement over previous years.

"So what's got you so moody?" Ori asked finally, giving him a knowing look.

"I'm not moody," Kili protested.

"Yes, you are," he said matter-of-factly. "You'd never let me go on and on about the idiots at my school without interrupting to tell me how stupid they all are. So what's up?"

He sighed and shrugged. "Fili and I had a little bit of a disagreement."

"You and Fili are fighting?!" Ori cried in shock.

"We are not fighting," Kili insisted. He thought about it for a moment before he gasped. "No! Fili and I are fighting! We never fight! I can't be in a fight with Fili!" he said in a panicked voice. "What do I do?!"

Ori looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well," he said slowly. "Are you upset at Fili?"

Kili opened his mouth to immediately reply "no," but then he thought about the question. Was he mad at Fili? Well, he was definitely annoyed at him for being so unfair to Tauriel. "I guess…"

"Well, why?"

"He doesn't like Tauriel," Kili said with a scowl. "And he hasn't even met her! She's my friend. He's the one who always wanted me to make more friends at school! You'd think he be happy that I did!"

"Why doesn't he like her?" Ori asked. "How does he even know enough about her to dislike her?"

"I've told him all about her," he answered. "And he thinks she's 'reckless.' But we're always careful to not get hurt!" he defended. "I mean, yeah, sometimes it's only because Gimli is telling us off, but still."

Ori frowned. "Do you talk about Tauriel a lot?"

"Well, yeah," Kili admitted. "But she's my friend and I spend a lot of time at school with her and the others so of course I do!"

"But do you talk about her more than your other friends?"

Kili bit his lip as he considered that. Yeah, he talked about all his friends, but maybe he did talk about Tauriel more, simply because she was his usual partner in crime at school, with the other three following their lead.

"Maybe…"

Ori rolled his eyes and flopped down on the bed next to Kili. "He's probably just jealous then," he stated. "He's probably is really worried, too, but he's definitely jealous."

"Jealous?" Kili said incredulously. "Why would he be jealous?"

"Well how would you feel if he started talking about how great some girl was all the time?"

"That's different," he insisted. He didn't like that scenario at all. "And I wouldn't be jealous. I'd just be worried that he had found someone that he was going to start spending time with and forget about me. That's not jealous."

"That is exactly jealous," Ori laughed.

Kili scowled again. "Fine, I might be jealous if that happened, but it's still different. Why would Fili be jealous of Tauriel? It's not like I like her more than him. I don't like anyone more than Fili. And I wouldn't start spending more time with her and forget about him. That's ridiculous. I'd rather spend time with Fili than I would with anyone."

"Well I know that, and you know that, but does Fili?" Ori asked with a small smile.

Kili wasn't listening though. He was going over his previous words and he winced as he realized how he sounded. "I didn't mean it like it sounded," he told Ori seriously. "It sounded like I didn't want to spend time with you and I do, I promise!"

The younger boy just laughed again. "I know that, Kili. But anyone who knows you at all knows how important Fili is to you. The question is, does Fili?"

Kili didn't have an answer for that, and the question haunted him all weekend. He pushed it out of his mind as much as possible in order to not spoil Ori's fun, but it niggled in the back of his mind regardless.

As soon as he was home, he darted up to Fili's room, not even bothering to knock, and leaped onto the bed where Fili was reading to wrap him in a tight hug.

"Wha—Kili!" Fili cried in surprise, automatically returning the hug.

"I missed you," he mumbled into Fili's shirt. "And I'm sorry."

"I missed you, too," the bewildered blond replied. "But what are you sorry for?"

"For talking about Tauriel so much and for being so reckless with her," he said, looking at him with earnest eyes. "I promise to be more careful. But Fili, you have to know that you're my favorite person, right? I love you more than I love anyone else."

"I love you, too, Kee," Fili murmured with a soft smile as he rearranged them so they could cuddle properly. "You're my favorite, too, you know?"

"I know," he said with a grin. And he did. He no longer had any doubt about his place in Fili's life.

"Cocky little runt, aren't you?" Fili teased.

"Not a runt," he shot back. "Taller than you are!"

"Why you little…"

Kili squealed and twisted away as Fili's fingers found his side to tickle him. "Sorry!" he cried among a peal of laughter. "Mercy! Please!"

"That's what I thought," Fili said smugly, tucking Kili against his side once more.

He pouted playfully but wasn't able to hold it for too long before smiling in contentment. "It's always going to be you and me, Fili," he said sleepily, not knowing if he was telling or asking.

It didn't matter, though, because Fili answered anyway. "Of course it will, Kee," he promised. "Nothing and no one will ever stop me loving you."

Kili smiled as his lids slid shut and sleep crept over him. "Love you best."

Tbc…