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It began, as many things do, with something completely innocent. In this case, flakes of snow floating outside the cabin window. They dusted the ground and clung to the pine trees, piling up into soft drifts as the hours went on.
Kili’s shout of joy wakened his brother out of a sound sleep. “Fee, check it out! We had a blizzard last night!” He poked the amorphous blob under the blankets.
“Great,” groaned Fili. “Go find the shovel and get started digging us out.”
“Oh, no, you’re not going back to sleep!” The blankets were snatched back, and Fili gasped as the chilly air hit him. “Come on, let’s have some fun!” A sweater and jeans were flung in his direction, and he blearily focused on his brother’s grinning face. How in the name of all that was holy could Kili be so damn cheerful at ridiculous AM, anyway?
“I’m not going anywhere till I have some coffee and some breakfast. The snow will wait that long,” Fili hissed as his feet hit the cold floor. “Go make yourself useful and get the fire going. It’s freezing in here.”
“You’re a wuss,” Kili sneered, but stirred the banked fire and added some more wood, coaxing a warm blaze. “I’ll go start the coffee, but if we’re going to waste time with breakfast, I demand pancakes.”
“Too good for toast, huh?” Fili stifled a yawn and dragged on the sweater and jeans, scrubbing his hands through his already sleep-tousled hair. Shuffling over to the dresser he got out a thick pair of socks and pulled them on. After a stop at the bathroom, he followed his nose out to the kitchen, where Kili met him with a mug of hot, black fortitude.
The coffee woke him up enough to get busy on the pancakes, and steaming stacks filled each plate in short order. Fili was a connoisseur–only real maple syrup was good enough for his masterpieces. He ate methodically, slicing off one bite at a time and dipping the forkful into the pool of syrup. Kili preferred the slash and burn method, spreading butter on each pancake, carving the whole stack into rubble, then dousing the entire mess with the syrup. Fili’s inner purist winced at the desecration, but Kili’s pure childlike enjoyment always made him smile.
Once dishes were taken care of—Fili was not a ‘neat freak’ despite his brother’s claims, but chipping fossilized syrup off plates was not his idea of a good time—both of them got into their coats and boots. Armed with shovels, they headed for the front door, which fortunately for them opened inward, or they may never have gotten out until spring. The snow was light enough to move easily, dense enough to pack under their feet as they forged the path out to the car. Each one taking a direction, the drive was cleared in record time and the still-reliable old four wheel drive was cleaned off.
Fili leaned on his shovel for a breather. He watched Kili set his shovel next to the car and saw the big grin stretch across his face. Little Energizer bunny wasn’t even slowing down, he thought with an amazed head shake as Kili pulled up his hood, threw himself on his back on a snow drift, and proceeded to make a messy, noisy snow angel, whooping with laughter the entire time. “C’mon, Fee, the snow is perfect!”
Well, he was a little overheated from all the exertion… Up went his own hood to protect the back of his neck, and moments later a snow angel of his own graced a drift on the other side of the shoveled path. “There, are you happy now…HEY!” he yelped as a well-packed snowball impacted on the side of his hood, just missing the side of his face. “You little shit, you’re gonna die!”
“You’ll have to catch me first!” Kili ducked around the woodpile, and for a moment Fili could do nothing but fend off more white missiles. How in hell did he make them that fast? Fili wondered as he dashed behind a tree to build his own arsenal. Youth, endurance, and speed would never top experience, guile and a willingness to disregard the rules of civilized combat.
“What’s the matter, big brother? Slowing down in your old age?” Kili taunted during a pause in the barrage. His head, with the hood fallen back, came up over the top of the woodpile, and the triumphant grin was wiped away when a missile caught him square in the middle of the forehead, spraying over his hair. Kili let out an outraged roar. “A slushball?? The hell?!” He wiped the mess away before it could drip down the neck of his jacket, muttering curses. The next volley of shots, all snow this time, exploded rapid fire against the woodpile, inches from Kili’s head.
“Give it up, Kee, you know my pitching arm is better than yours,” Fili called. He’d moved behind some evergreen bushes while Kili was wiping off the slush and now had a clear view of his brother’s position. Kili turned to see where he was, and a series of snowballs made a perfect arc around his body, peppering the side of the cabin. Kili visibly deflated, dropping the last couple snowballs he carried. Damn, it was like kicking a puppy…
Fili came out from behind the bush, hands in plain view. “At the risk of sounding like that damn movie, do you want to build a snowman instead? You were right, the snow is perfect. And we aren’t completely soaked yet.”
“Well, one of us isn’t,” Kili sniffed.
“Ah, come on, I won fair and square…well, except for the slushball thing. I’ll let you smack me with one if you want, just to make us even.” Kili chucked a half-hearted handful of snow in Fili’s direction, a lopsided grin telegraphing his forgiveness for the big brother who could do no wrong. “So where do you think we should put our snowman? Snowwoman? Snowperson? Damn PC just gets in the way of everything these days,” Fili muttered.
“Let’s start building it then see what it ends up being. And I’m thinking maybe near the front door, to guard us? And it’ll clear out some more of the snow from around the front of the cabin,” Kili suggested after a moment’s consideration.
“Good thinking—I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”
“Like my stunning good looks and awesome baking skills aren’t enough? I’m hurt.”
“I didn’t say it was the only reason. C’mon, let’s get this thing built and see what we have to customize it with.”
In the end, the figure became something of a snow drag queen, sporting a mop wig, red lips from a handful of cranberries (Kili had intended to make some of his homemade sauce, but this construction was worth sacrificing a couple servings worth of berries for), twig eyelashes, and a hot pink feather boa that they’d found in a box under a bed. They both snapped pictures on their phones and emailed them to their mother and uncle, with Kili adding a note: “OK, whose is this? Not uncle’s color, must be Bilbo’s. Want the full story asap.”
The temperature had dropped while they worked, and they were both starting to shiver when they called it a day. Fili stoked the fires, making the cabin toasty, and made a mental note to thank Thorin for installing the extra large water heater last year, or he probably wouldn’t have gotten a shower with the amount of time Kili spent defrosting. And he had the nerve to call Fili a wuss…
Supper was soup and sandwiches, neither of them up to much effort. And after supper there was Kili’s patented Kahlua-laced cocoa and to-die-for peanut butter cookies. They curled up together on the sofa, watching Pacific Rim for the umpteenth time (Kili always insisted that Mako Mori should have been the one to lay a beat down on Chuck Hansen, not Raleigh Beckett), making short work of the cookies and cocoa. One of Dis’ quilts covered them both, and Kili was nodding off by the time Herc Hansen stopped the clock.
“Okay, time for bed,” Fili said, holding out a hand to help his sleepy brother to his feet. “I’m going to run some water in the cups, we can leave them for morning. And so help me, if you wake me up for anything less than the cabin being on fire in the morning, what the Kaiju did to Hong Kong is going to be nothing compared to what I’ll do to you.”
“Right…” Kili said around a jaw-cracking yawn, shuffling toward the bathroom to brush his teeth. No matter how tired he was, Kili always brushed his teeth before bed—seeing his grandfather without his dentures one day as a child had been enough to scar him for life and give him a lifelong obsession with dental hygiene. His pearly whites were staying right where they belonged, thank you very much.
Fili finished up in the kitchen and made his own pilgrimage to the bathroom. By the time he shucked out of the oversized sweater (one of Thorin’s) that served him as a bathrobe), Kili was snoring softly, curled up with his hands tucked under his chin. Fili’s smile was soft as he slid in on the other side of the bed, carefully positioning himself as the ‘big spoon’ and hooking an arm around Kili’s waist. Kili woke just enough to murmur, “Thanks for today, Fee,” before descending back into dreamland.
“Any time, little brother—any time.”