Chapter Text
Kili had been crying now for three years.
Or half an hour.
But it felt like the former.
Dwalin groaned and shifted the baby in his arms. At first he’d barely wanted to touch the little thing, images of Dis cutting off his precious family jewels if he dropped her tiny helpless son dancing in his head (in full color and with copious sound effects). His first plan had been to leave Kíli in his bassinet, where the baby had been sleeping peacefully at the beginning of this unexpected duty. As long as he didn't mess about with the baby, the baby would sleep, and all would be well. He only had to watch Fili, who essentially entertained himself.
Alas, Dwalin had been forced to lift the babe out when he started screaming an hour or so in, because Fili solemnly informed him: “I’m not ‘llowed to hold Kili if I’m standin’ up.
Well. He hadn’t dropped Kili yet, but the baby also hadn’t stopped crying to so much as breathe for what felt like hours, though he suspected it was closer to minutes. Dis had assured him the babe wouldn’t be hungry, having eaten just before Dwalin walked in the door. Dwalin certainly hoped that wasn’t the problem. He didn’t have the…equipment. To solve that particular dilemma. So he’d decided to try walking the baby, something Balin had referenced doing when Dwalin was an infant, generally to make sure Dwalin remembered which of the two of them was older and wiser.
This wasn’t meant to be his job. This was BALIN’S job, for just that reason.
Balin had no right to be away just when Dis and her husband needed a babysitter.
“Shh,” he tried, though he wasn’t much of a hand at the noise and it came out as a sort of spit and garble.
Kíli finally took a deep breath, only to cry some more.
“You have'ta move him closer to your face, Mistah Dwalin.”
Dwalin stopped and looked down at Dis’s eldest, who met his gaze with serious blue eyes. The lad looked like his father, but those eyes were all Thorin and Dis. “My face?” he demanded, with more bark to his voice than he’d meant, but Fíli didn’t back down. Oh, no, he straightened his little shoulders and lifted his chin and said:
“Yes, sir!” like a tiny warrior.
Dwalin looked doubtful, but did as he was told, lifting his arms so that the tiny face was closer to his own.
Kili was a handsome babe most of the time, but at the moment his face was screwed up so tight he looked like an especially pissed off prune.
“Say his name, Mistah Dwalin.”
Dwalin sighed.
“Kíli,” he rumbled in what he hoped was a baby-friendly way, but he was really more used to snapping at trainees and threatening to break kneecaps as needed than with talking to babies (the recruits always thought he would go through with it, though of course he wouldn’t; warriors with broken kneecaps were no good for anybody).
Kíli hiccupped.
And opened his eyes.
They were dark, dark blue in a way that meant they were changing colors. They’d be like Nali’s, he reckoned, a dark sort of hazel-
Two tiny hands reached out, grabbed his beard, and tugged.
Dwalin didn’t yelp, because Dwalin never yelped, but he did, perhaps, make a bit of a…noise. Of surprise. And certainly not of pain because Mahal’s forge how could he pull so hard?!
The fingers twisted and tangled, and Kíli’s mouth opened for what Dwalin assumed would be a truly ear-splitting wail-
And laughter bubbled out instead.
It was a warm, gurgling, silly laugh that startled a smile even out of Dwalin – at least until the brat pulled again, bringing tears to the huge warrior's eyes.
He’d faced wargs without tears.
And now this.
Thank Mahal no one older than six was here to witness his shame.
There was a scuttling noise beside him as Fíli scrambled onto a chair to see better. The little boy was smiling fondly at his brother as Kíli attempted to remove Dwalin’s beard one handful at a time. The teenie fingers were kneading.
Did the baby think he was a cat?!
“Kíli likes beards,” Fíli informed him, much too late to do any good. Or rather, at just the right time, as Dwalin now realized he had been set up by a dwarfling barely past the toddler stage.
“Yes, well, he can’t have mine!” Dwalin shifted the small body to one huge hand and reached up with the other to free his precious face fur.
“He’ll-”
Dwalin regretted leaning forward to lessen the tension on his beard, foolishly thinking it would give him a better shot at freeing it from the baby’s evil grip. Because that meant his ear was so, so much closer when Kíli let out a high-pitched scream of severe disapproval as Dwalin successfully extricated one tiny handful of course black hair.
“Yeah. That.”
Dwalin was a dwarf who knew war, hunger, and strife. He had seen a dragon in person and wore scars from orcs, wargs, and human robbers. He was one of the greatest warriors in Erid Luin.
But being a great warrior means sometimes admitting defeat.
“If,” he asked carefully, “I let him have my beard, he won’t cry?”
“Uh-huh.”
Dwalin pondered this. “Uh-huh he will or uh-huh he won’t?”
“Uh-huh he won’t cwy any more.” Fili’s mastery of the letter r was shaky at best.
Dwalin sighed and looked into the once again laughing eyes.
“You win this time,” he muttered over Kíli’s delighted giggles and kneading fingers, “but don’t expect this sort of thing all the time. I’m a warrior, not a pushover.”
Kíli stuck a hunk of hair in his mouth and beamed happily and wetly up at him.