38. Fili/Ori

Prompt is “You fainted...straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

-

“You going to write it in?”

Ori hunches down further over his journal, so Kíli can’t see. “Don’t you have something to do?”

“Eh, likely. Cannot remember what though, so...” He sprawls out beside Ori, pulling a blade out of his belt and picking at his teeth with it. “You have to add it in.”

“I have to do no such thing,” Ori refutes, his face heating up. It’s a stupid thing to even get embarrassed about, but of course Kíli had to see it happen. Ori will be hearing about this from now until one of them is dead. “This is going to be an official transcript of this venture. No one wants to read about a scribe fainting.”

Kíli shrugs. “Bit different when you faint into the Crown Prince’s arms.”

“That is not what happened,” Ori hisses, looking around them to make sure no one else is paying them any attention before he hits Kíli in the shoulder. “And if you go around telling people that, I will murder you, you clot!”

“Can’t murder me, I’m second-in-line!”

“Yes, exactly, second!”

“Well don’t say it like that,” Kíli mumbles. “Makes me sound expendable.”

“Good,” Ori says. “Now let me work.”

Kíli lets him alone for a little while, but Ori guesses he gets bored, because he sits up and leans over the page again, saying, “If I order you to include it, do you have to obey?” The question sounds so stupid, Ori almost snaps back something insulting, before he realizes that Kíli might be right. “It’s just that you and Balin keep saying the account is for the Archives, and since I’m a member of the royal family, I’m supposedly in charge of those. And you, if one follows that line of thinking.”

“Since when did you start thinking?” Ori whines, trying to restrain from thumping Kíli properly. They’re not children anymore, and Ori doesn’t want to act like one in front of their bloody king of all people. “I’m not putting it in, Kíli! Find something to occupy yourself with, please.”

He’s never been that lucky. “Why are you acting so strange about this? You’ve always liked a good laugh as much as me.” He’s right about that, too. In any other case, Ori would be fine. It’s not as though they haven’t embarrassed themselves plenty in front of one another over the years.

This is different though.

“Ori, come on, it’ll be a good laugh for whatever poor sod is reading this in a hundred years,” Kíli wheedles.

“What’ll be a good laugh?” Fíli asks, joining the two of them, his swords in their scabbards thrown over his shoulder. He leans the pair against a tree, and falls back on his elbows in the dirt.

“Nothing,” Ori says, at the same time Kíli says, “Ori fainting on you.”

“He didn’t faint on me,” Fíli says. “He fainted, and I caught him.”

“Same thing,” Kíli says.

Fíli rolls his eyes at Ori, and Ori looks back down at the page, his insides torn between embarrassed and pleased.

“Kíli, get over here and finish fletching these arrows,” Dwalin shouts across the camp, startling all three of them.

“Oh, that’s what I was supposed to be doing,” Kíli says, and rolls to his feet, heading over to where Dwalin and Thorin are sitting. “I’m going to ask about that order, Ori! I won’t forget that!”

That leaves just Ori and Fíli. “Even money says he forgets,” Fíli says.

“He’ll just find something else to tease me about,” Ori replies, shrugging.

“So it’s something to tease you about?” Fíli asks. “Why’s that then?”

When Ori dares to look up at him, Fíli is smiling, and he nudges Ori with his boot when Ori looks back down at his paper. “Fainting into my arms is a bit of a grand gesture. If you wanted my attention, Ori...” He shifts himself so he’s sitting flush against Ori now. “You don’t have to go to such extremes.”

“Shut up,” Ori mutters.