Archive of Our Own

✧ Of all the dwarves, he's the most insecure about your height difference.

✧ He knows that height matters little when it comes to honour and strength, or anything truly important. But sometimes he still feels lesser about it.

✧ It tends to manifest most when he wants to kiss you, and instinctively turns only to the side. Then he remembers he has to ask, has to lean up.

✧ Thorin wants to be able to press his lips to yours spontaneously when you're not in bed, and instead he needs to awkwardly ask every time.

✧ Sometimes you'll see him turn to you out of the corner of his eye, and then briefly look away in almost shame before asking for a kiss.

✧ Most of this can be counteracted by simply sitting with him, where the difference suddenly becomes a lot less noticeable.

✧ (And gets you a lot more kisses.)

✧ Regardless of how he sometimes feels about it, your height is absolutely bragged about when he tells people about you.

✧ Your personality comes first, of course, but Thorin is generally a private person - and if it took him so long to open up to his feelings about you, he can't exactly do it to strangers.

✧ Thorin also tremendously enjoys making armour and weapons for you.

✧ It can be hard to find them in your size, especially in Erebor, but the second you mention wanting something you can see his eyes light up with love and ideas.

✧ He also enjoys seeing you fight with them - knowing that he could help you succeed.

✧ Doesn't really acknowledge the height difference much, save for when it actually impacts him.

✧ Although he is said he can't just immediately kiss you on the cheek or lips when he feels like it, he sometimes enjoys the challenge.

✧ Staring at you until the words come to him, and then asking for a kiss in a way that shows such sincerity and love you can't help but be a little flustered.

✧ (Occasionally you'll simply get a hand in yours and a longing look when he can't think of anything.)

✧ The other thing you have between the two of you is your inside joke.

✧ When Fíli and you first start dating, he sometimes finds it hard to keep his hands off you.

✧ Not even in a sexual way, but he just finds something about your physical touch comforting.

✧ Which is what led to the incident.

✧ After so many years with Kíli, it's rather normal for him to simply run at full speed when wanting to hug someone.

✧ Unfortunately for the both of you, when he runs to hug you he collides more with your legs and centre of gravity than anything else.

✧ Lying on the ground together, there's a moment of silence before both of you start laughing loudly.

✧ "I suppose you've... fallen for me?"

✧ "I will leave you on this floor, Fili."

✧ Will ask you to get things from the high shelf, but insists on trying to get it himself while tempting fate with dubious balancing tricks.

✧ Definitely not a problem for Kíli (as we've seen), and if anything it makes you even more of his type.

✧ Very unashamed of asking you if you could fetch him something from a higher place, then looks around smugly as if people are going to be impressed by it.

✧ The only thing he's truly sad about is that, while he can steal your clothes, you can't steal his.

✧ And so the idea comes to him for how he can rectify that problem.

✧ Thanks to some miracle, he manages to keep the massive shirt he's acquired secret from you until he presents it to you.

✧ At first you think it's just a shirt for you, and then he explains that it's his shirt.

✧ The confusion must show on his face, because he opens his mouth to explain before turning slightly pink.

✧ As if the gesture of what he's just done has only now occurred to him.

✧ It takes a little gentle coaxing, but eventually Kíli tells the truth.

✧ That there's a certain comfort your clothes bring him when you're away and he misses you - and he felt sorry that you couldn't experience the same comfort.

✧ So this shirt is his way of rectifying it.

✧ Of giving you another piece of himself to hold onto while he's away.

✧ Jokes that, one day, he'll get a hat large enough to be taller than you.

✧ Once the two of you finally move in together, you notice the little ramps and contraptions he's built around the house.

✧ Blush comes onto his face when you acknowledge them, but he's happy to show you the purpose. They make him tall enough for you to no longer need to bend down when you kiss him.

✧ Goes very red when you ask him precisely how long he spent figuring out what the perfect height would be.

✧ Doesn't take issue with your height either, although if there's anything he feels insecure about it's his inability to hug you while you're standing up.

✧ When you're in bed together his arms are often wrapped around you to make up for the lost opportunities.

✧ Always forgets to mention the height of his beloved when introducing them.

✧ It's mainly a genuine mistake - but he also loves the looks of awe he gets when you finally arrive.

✧ (He also wants to make sure that they discover just how amazing you are for not just your body.)

✧ Doesn't like how tempting it is to hide behind you when he's scared, but after a while he's more willing to instantly go to your side.

✧ Is absolutely fine with asking you to fetch him things from the high shelf.

✧ You're used to people staring at you for the first time you meet, their eyes quickly going from head to toe as they check your height is real.

✧ What you aren't used to is people looking at you for the first time and going completely red, then faintly mumbling, "Gosh."

✧ Bilbo is terribly apologetic afterwards - he's simply never really seen big-folk beside Gandalf - but you reassure him that it's fine.

✧ There's a part of you that rather enjoys just how easily you can fluster the hobbit.

✧ You can always tell when he wants to kiss you, because the grasp he has on your hand gets slightly tighter and he briefly looks away out of embarrassment.

✧ He's always very sincere when he asks for a kiss from you.

✧ Something small for you and huge for him is how much you open up his possibility for collecting walking sticks.

✧ It always makes you smile when he returns from the market with an old antique one that no hobbit is quite sure of the origins of.

✧ Or when he spots a particularly good fallen branch and dashes off the path to get it, his eyes flickering from you to the stick while furrowed in thought.

✧ Also enjoys commissioning clothes for you after the adventures of the Company.

✧ Insists that he doesn't mind, and in fact rather likes, being able to spoil you.

✧ (He's also very thankful for the money that he gets from the Company when it comes to renovating Bag End's ceilings.)

✧ He's still taller than you... by quite a significant amount. But not nearly as much as he usually is when he meets people.

✧ Beorn very much enjoys the fact that you're not too much shorter than him.

✧ He hardly needs to bend when he kisses you, and it makes for a brief kiss to your forehead as he passes by that much easier.

✧ It also means he has someone he can hug properly, without the need to stoop or bend.

✧ Having you wrapped in his arms and just standing with you means so much to him, because it's a sensation he's never felt before.

✧ Rarely can he hug someone of this height - and he's never done it before with true love as his motivator.

✧ Is rather clingy for the first few months of your dating, even if he tries not to acknowledge it.

✧ Also very much enjoys sparring with you and begin able to trade techniques that are actually applicable.

✧ (Does laugh when you confidently try to use one of his longer weapons, only to be completely off-balance because of it.)