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“We never did right by them,” Oin says as he eyes Thorin over his glasses. “The Fitzris – we never made it right.”
---
“Afternoon,” Nori smirks up at his brothers, not bothering to stand up. It seems pointless anyway, being as they’re behind the glass wall and he couldn’t do anything civilised like shake their hands. And, more to the point, he’s comfortable with his feet kicked up on the counter and the phone pressed to his ear.
Dori doesn’t come visiting often, he doesn’t trust anyone else to run his tearoom. Which means Nori feels special. His older brother looks ridiculously out of place in the visitor centre, even if he’s not wearing a suit – this time. Ori comes weekly and has learnt to dress down, but neither of his brothers fit here. Not like Nori does.
“Feet,” Dori raps curtly on the glass to back up his words.
But Dori is behind the glass and can’t touch him and Nori doesn’t feel like it.
“How’s dear little wifey?” Sometimes Dori wears his wedding ring and sometimes he doesn’t. Dori’s not wearing it today, and there’s a flash of something that’s most definitely not pain on his older brother’s face.
But still, Dori says curtly “She’s at her sister’s.”
Nori winds his hair around his index and middle fingers – it’s long now, long enough to do anything with and much longer than their stepfather would have let him have it – and says “I’m sorry to hear that,” and pretends he means it.
“My exams start in a week,” Ori casts his eyes between the two of them, and there’s something deliciously right about their family reunions happening in whatever jail Nori’s found himself in at the time. “I don’t think I’ll be able to come and visit you until they’re done? It’ll only be a few weeks!” he adds hurriedly when Nori turns his stare onto his younger brother.
“Whatever,” and it hurts a little more than Nori expected it to.
At his dismissal, Dori’s round, friendly face shutters off. “We’re wasting our time today, aren’t we?” he says it like one would talk to an animal. “Come on, Ori. Maybe he’ll be in a better mood next time.”
Ori looks flustered. He waves at Nori awkwardly as he scampers after their older brother.
Nori goes to the gym and screams, punches the bag until his knuckles bleed and they pull him away with one hand in his hair and another around his waist.
Hours later, in solitary confinement, he picks at his bloody knuckles and smears the blood over his palms.
---
Three weeks later, Dori comes to visit him alone.
They glare at each other through the thick glass, but Nori thinks he sees Dori’s eyes soften when he sees his knuckles. They just won’t heal, which might be because he’s developed the habit of picking at them nightly.
“They said you were in solitary confinement,” as a conversation starter it’s right up there.
“Hit a guard,” Nori mumbles through the knuckle he’s chewing. He hasn’t brushed his hair in three weeks and Dori can tell, if the way his older brother wrinkles his nose means anything. (And Dori keeps his hair long too, but not as long as Nori’s and far, far neater and Nori thinks about what that means, that kind, respectable Dori has the same ghosts that waste of space, bastard Nori does.)
“How much time do you have left?” he hates the knowing look on Dori’s face.
He shrugs, biting down hard on his knuckle until his finger starts twitching.
To be fair, it’s not him being totally obtuse; he doesn’t know. Nori’s not sure if his last fight will add time to his sentence – and it’s not wholly unplanned, because he knew he’d be doing something similar soon enough. He’s just got his cell the way he likes it.
Dori slams his hands down on the counter, loud enough to startle to guards in the corner. Nori stills, staring at him with widened eyes. His breathing is shallow, all of a sudden.
“Stop pissing around, Nori!” his older brother snaps, thick hands clenching slightly and Nori is suddenly very glad that the thick glass is between them.
And then Dori realises what he’s doing. He moves his hands to his lap and sits back in his chair – all slow movements, and Nori’s thankful for them.
“Sorry Trouble,” he says softly.
Nori swallows past the thickening in his throat and forces himself to relax. The guards are still watching them with varying degrees of interest. Sometimes, depending on the guard, there are bets placed. Sometimes the real shit heads – the ones that Nori takes a great delight in bruising and biting and hurting – try and stock up on prisoner weak spots.
“I have a spare room,” Dori keeps going in that quiet undertone, “So stop thinking that you’ve got nowhere to go.”
Nori shrugs again and bites back down on his knuckle.
“Ori’s only got three exams left,” he’s never been so glad to hear about fucking exams. “He thinks they’re going quite well. He might end up being the first one of us to go to university.” There’s a proud smile on Dori’s face. Nori’s never made him proud, and he forces down the thought, because he’s not going to be jealous of Ori, that’s low. Even for him, that’s low.
He fights the urge to swing up his feet again, and thinks about going to the gym again.
“I have to go – I left one of the locals in charge of the shop for a few hours,” Dori checks his watch.
“Locals?”
“I’ve been doing some work with the Dwarves, after the whole Smaug thing.” Nori doesn’t read the news, so he doesn’t know what Dori’s talking about. The idea of Dori involved with politics is somewhat bizarre. “Anyway, one of them offered to mind the shop for me. I paid her, obviously, but – well, anyway. I have to go.”
Dori doesn’t quite know how to say goodbye that much is clear. He settles for the same awkward wave that Ori gave him last time. Awkwardness is a family trait, it seems.
---
“There’s a problem at the suppliers for the tea,” Ori says as Dori pushes open the door, not looking up from his work on the table nearest the counter. “They said they’ll – Nori!” Ori’s shriek makes Nori cringe, and it catches him completely unawares when his younger brother scrambles over the table and flings himself at Nori.
“Uh,” Nori pats his back, not quite sure what he’s supposed to do. The last time he’d had physical contact with Ori, he’d been eighteen and out of prison for three months. That was… a rather long time ago. “Hi.”
Ori pulls away and gives Dori a shove, “You never told me –”
“Thought it would be a surprise,” Dori remarks drily, raising his hand to the woman behind the counter. “Hi Dis, thanks for that.”
“Always nice to pick up some more money,” the black haired woman behind the counter shrugs. “Welcome back, Nori.”
“Dis?” If Nori tilts his head and squints, he can just about see the only girl he used to hang around with in the woman standing in Dori’s shop. Her hair is shorter, and there’s less makeup, but – yes, he thinks he can see it.
(There’s something else that’s changed too, of course. Dori had come in himself to explain that, in short words, about Vali. And it hit Nori like a punch to the stomach, that his best friend – well, he’d always been an utterly shite judge of character.)
“None other,” she runs a hand through the side of her overgrown undercut with a smile that’s a shadow of the one she used to have. “I have to go. Kili’s got a doctor’s appointment and he’ll use it as an excuse to skive if I don’t take him.”
Son, Nori reminds himself. One older, one younger than Ori.
Well, doesn’t that make him feel old?
Dis punches his shoulder awkwardly on the way out, like they used to. He grins back at her, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“You ok?” Dori asks, because of course Dori’s been watching and listening and knows every-fucking-thing that’s going through Nori’s head right now. He tugs at his hoodie and pulls it closer with a short nod.
Dori doesn’t wear his wedding ring anymore.
Nori pays attention as he’s shown Dori’s flat above the shop – his room is furthest away from the door, and he can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional. Keep him the farthest away so that he’ll wake the house if he leaves.
He wouldn’t though. Nori’s damn good at keeping quiet.
He puts the bag – full of all his worldly possessions – on the bed, and debates staying for a while.
---
"You want me in charge of the shop?" Nori arches an eyebrow.
"You'll earn your keep," his older brother says firmly, pulling on his jacket. "Until you get a job, you do hours here."
"And after?"
"Then you pay me rent," the look on Dori's face brooks no arguments. "I'm not made of money."
"Does Ori pay keep?" He snaps. It's too early for Nori, and he's barely slept. He doesn't want to be here, it was Dori's idea and if he wanted to work he could - well.
"Ori's sixteen, Trouble," Dori grabs his keys, "You're - considerably older. And if you were at school, or college, wherever, then you wouldn't pay either. So if you don't want to pay -"
"I have GCSEs in lockpicking and resetting bones, I can really see the College taking me on!" Nori snaps.
"Go study medicine," is his older brother's parting words as he exits.
Nori snarls wordlessly at his back and suppresses the urge to hurl a chair through the shop's large windowed front. But that would draw attention, and Nori prefers fewer witnesses when he does shit like that.
The till is simple enough to get the hang of, and most of Dori's customers are sympathetic when he makes mistakes. You must be the other brother! Some of them say. Some of them just cluck their tongues at him in a way that confirms they've been in Erebor long enough to remember all the terrible stories about the Fitzri brothers.
Those ones are the worst. They make Nori feel fucking helpless.
There is a lull in the shop after an old lady - who looks at him and his messily braided hair as though he's junk left over from mining and demands to know where "Mr Fitzri" is and doesn't look impressed when Nori tells her that's his name too - leaves with a cup of Earl Grey and milk. That sick feeling of helplessness has been steadily increasing.
He lets his head rest on the cool granite counter, but it does no good.
His fingers are twitching and something inside him is flaring white. With trembling hands he unlocks the till and grabs one of the paper bags Dori keeps by the side of it. There's only a couple of hundred in there, but he empties it down to the last penny and stows the bag hurriedly in one of the expansive pockets of his hoodie.
Nori does lock the door behind him, because even though he hates Dori he doesn't want him to get robbed.
Well - not that there's much left to rob unless Erebor has a burgeoning furniture thieving problem.
He spends some of the money on cigarettes and alcohol; legal vices that won't violate his parole if he doesn't over-indulge noticeably. He doesn't know what to do with the rest of it.
Eventually he returns to the flat and buries it under a pile of clothes in his - Dori's - wardrobe. Nori feels better just knowing it's there, that he can leave any time he wants, when he figures out where to go. He hears Moria's a shithole. Sounds perfect.
When Dori comes back to a closed shop and a younger brother reeking of alcohol and nicotine stained fingers, he doesn't shout.
"Go get ready for dinner," he pats a wide eyed Ori on the shoulder and fixes Nori with a look that seems almost parental. "And you."
Come on, Nori eggs him on. Call the police tell me to get out you've done your best.
"You're too drunk to eat, aren't you?" Dori makes a move towards him and Nori flinches into the sofa - too drunk to eat, too drunk to control his instincts. "I -"
For a moment, the brothers just stare at each other. For a moment, Nori wants to say he's sorry - for the cafe, for Dori's divorce, for being such a useless heap of nothing.
The moment passes.
"I'll get you a bucket," Dori gives him that queer look again and leaves.
---
Nori empties the till three more times before Dori bans him from the shop. Each time his eyes get tighter and Nori thinks this time, this time you’ll throw me out, this time you’ll kick me until I bleed, but he never does.
He’s got almost a thousand pounds stashed in the bottom of his wardrobe, and Dori’s not asked for any of it back.
“Why do you keep doing this?” Ori asks, a week after the third time. He’s been sitting at the counter doing his revision all day, and if he fails then it’ll all be Nori’s fault. Most things in this family are Nori’s fault. He’s useless like that. “Dori spent ages sorting out your room.”
“’Course he did,” Nori’s not drinking daily and he doesn’t rely or depend on it, but he’s cradling one of his bottles of vodka right now. In a pinch, a bottle can be used as a weapon.
Not that he would ever use it on his little brother.
“He did,” Ori looks up from his last minute Physics revision. “It used to be his office. It’s why the computer’s in the kitchen now, we didn’t have anywhere else to put it.”
He swallows, mouth suddenly dry, “He probably just wanted to renovate.”
“Does everyone always have an ulterior motive for you?” Ori taps his pencil on the kitchen counter before wrinkling his nose and scrubbing out an answer. “Blast, I hate nanoscience.”
“In my experience everyone does.”
“That’s because you spent your teenage years with thugs,” his little brother shrugs and doesn’t look up from where he’s painstakingly working his way through whatever science shit he was just babbling about.
“Drop it, Ori,” his fingers are twitching.
“We’re your family, we’re not –” apparently, whatever booksmarts Ori has, he’s not clever enough to notice that Nori really can’t be having this conversation.
“I said drop it,” he grips the bottle tighter.
His little brother’s angry face looks like Dori, “No! You treat us like crap and –”
“Do you know what family does?” it bursts out of Nori like shattered glass and sticks in his throat much the same. “Family holds your head under water until you pass out, they keep you up screaming, they do shit like this!” he wrenches up his sleeve. It’s not easy to see anymore, but if you’re looking you can see the unsteady way Nori’s arm had reset itself after being broken.
“I –” Ori takes a step back as he stands up. “Nori, I –”
“Get the fuck out of my way!”
He shoves Ori as hard as he can, pushes him out of the way as he heads to Dori’s room. He hears his brother sob in pain because Nori’s not exactly weak.
He hit Ori.
He hit his little brother.
Nori grabs the wedding ring that Dori keeps on the side and runs.
“Nori!” Ori shrieks as the door slams behind him.
---
It’s almost dark by the time blue lights catch up with him. He hugs his knees and waits for handcuffs.
Instead, Dori sits down next to him. “I’d like my wedding ring back, please.”
“I hit Ori,” he keeps the ring tight in his fist and listens out for the police.
“I know,” Dori’s making an effort to keep his voice calm and even and Nori’s not sure why. He just wants Dori to scream at him, tell him what they both know – that he’s hopeless, a waste of space, a piece of shit.
“I hit him,” he repeats, just in case Dori’s not clicked. “I shoved him against a wall. He wouldn’t stop talking and I wanted him to stop.”
“Ori doesn’t remember,” Dori moves his arm in a deliberate motion, keeping it low and in Nori’s eyesight the entire time. He wraps his hand over the closest of Nori’s fists. “Ori doesn’t remember what it was like.”
Nori shrugs off the hand on his and tenses his fists. If he whirled around now, at this distance, he could probably break Dori’s nose.
At the same distance, Dori could probably break his back.
“Is he ok?”
“He’s fine. Well,” his brother amends, wrinkling his nose in the half light, “He’s a little shaken and upset, yes, but not hurt.”
“I didn’t – I’m sorry,” he tightens his fists again and screws his eyes shut. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m –”
“Shh,” Dori places a hand on his hair and makes Nori jump, his heart hammering in his chest. He cringes away. “It’s ok, it’s ok,” he whispers. He’s stroking Nori’s hair. “It’s ok, Scrap, it’s ok. I know.”
“Don’t call me that,” Nori rubs his fingers along the gold ring in his hand, “You used to call me that when I was being good.” Which means that Nori hasn’t been called it since he was about six and started sneaking out at night to steal food from the kitchen. “I hit Ori.”
Dori makes a soft sound in the back of his throat and drops his hand down to Nori’s shoulder, tugging him in. “Let’s go and see Ori, then. You two can talk it out.” He clambers to his feet and Nori hears his joints click.
Nori watches him head back to the police car. He’s almost there by the time Nori makes up his mind. “Dori?”
“Yes, Trouble?” Dori is so fucking mild, it scares him.
He jumps to his feet and holds out the wedding ring, “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” the smile on Dori’s face is sweet, but sad. “Come on, let’s go home.”
---
“Thanks, Dwalin,” Dori pats the fucking massive policeman’s shoulder as they pull up outside the tearoom. “You’re a star.”
The policeman – Dwalin – grunts and gives Nori a look that he can’t quite decipher. He’s not in the habit of deciphering or understanding policemen, and he narrows his eyes.
From the inside, there is suddenly a multitude of crashing noises that make Nori freeze and Dori pinch the bridge of his nose. “If I’ve told that boy once, I’ve told him a thousand times, to be care –“
“Nori! Nori!” the door flies open and a ball of awkward hair and knitwear tumbles out into the street. Ori’s only stopped from launching himself at Nori by the arm Dori throws out automatically. Nori’s already backing away, legs bumping against the back of the police car.
“Careful,” Dori says, removing his arm. “I’ll see you next week, Dwalin?”
The policeman grunts again and Nori’s glad he has the presence of mind to jump forward before the car disappears.
“Nori?” Ori twists the hem of his jumper around his hand. His eyes are red rimmed.
“Hi,” Nori shoves his hands in his pockets and sets his shoulders in a pose that makes him look more confident than he feels. “I’m –”
His little brother looks like he’s going to throw himself at Nori again, but has the presence of mind to suddenly stop. “I’m sorry!” he blurts out. “I didn’t think – I didn’t mean –”
“I shouldn’t have hit you,” Nori says slowly. “You were right.”
“I –”
“You have an exam tomorrow,” Dori breaks in, and Nori breathes a sigh of relief, and then feels like an utter shit again because he’s probably just made Ori fail. “Upstairs – both of you, come on.”
They do as they’re told. He even lets Dori push him – gently, very gently, as though Nori was one of the china cups Dori keeps on shelves around the flat – onto the sofa and settle a cup of weird smelling tea in his hands.
Ori comes shuffling in, wearing full length owl pyjamas and Harry Potter slippers. He takes the seat next to Nori and, to Nori’s complete surprise, proceeds to bury his face in Nori’s neck. Nori raises his hand to pet the side of his little brother’s face like a child with a strange dog.
“Don’t spill my tea,” he mutters, “Dori will kill you.”
“It’d be a waste of good tea,” their older brother nods severely, pouring out another cup and handing it over to Ori. “Drink up, you two, and then bed.”
---
Ori is watching the shop, because Dori doesn’t trust Nori to do it alone. It’s wholly justified (Nori gave back all the money, but he still took the fucking stuff), but it still stings in a horrible way.
What sort of a fuck up is he?
So he occupies himself with a copy of the local newspaper and a pen he stole from Ori, trying to find a job that won’t be bothered with the thirteen years spent in fucking prison.
It’s quite a hard task.
Could he work in a chip shop? No. Well, not that one, anyway. Of course the only chip shop hiring is the one that Nori and Vali threw someone through the window of when they were kids. He’s pretty sure he’s still banned.
There is no way in hell Nori would be allowed near a car, so the mechanics hiring are out.
It wouldn’t be so frustrating if Dori wasn’t so fucking nice about it.
He’s so caught up in his rage at the fucking newspaper that the scrape of a chair makes him jump and puts him on high alert. Fists clenched and half raised, he looks up –
– to meet the cold blue eyes of Thorin Oakenshield.
“May I sit here?” Oakenshield doesn’t ask, sitting down.
Nori shrugs and goes back to drawing cocks on the adverts that pepper the useless piece of shit newspaper.
“Job hunting?” Oakenshield’s definitely making an effort to be friendly, but Nori can’t shake all his memories of Dis and Frerin talking about how much of a pain their perfect older brother was, like a third parent. He knows now that Oakenshield’s preparing for election, that Smaug will be gone one day soon. Following in the family tradition, Frerin would have sneered. “How’s it going?”
“You tell me,” Nori sneers back, those memories raising his hackles. “Know any places that’ll hire someone whose CV includes expert in house burgling and hitting people with baseball bats?”
Oakenshield doesn’t blink, “You were friends with Vali.”
“I was,” he rests his arms on the table and leans forward. The more space he takes up, the more uncomfortable it makes Oakenshield; a tactic he’s picked up – oh, somewhere.
“Did you know –”
“Yes,” and he bares his teeth in a snarl. “I got rid of my fuckheaded stepfather and immediately went searching for someone else who hits fucking kids to fill the void.”
To his surprise, Oakenshield… relaxes. “You’re right,” he nods, “I’m sorry. That was – monumentally stupid of me. Not to mention insensitive.”
“S’ok,” Nori is now officially on the back foot. If Oakenshield isn’t here to smash his face in for not being psychic enough to predict that his little sister has appalling taste in men, what’s he here for? After a few moments of painfully awkward silence, Nori returns once more to his generously penis-ed newspaper.
“I’m… looking for someone,” the other man at the table says slowly.
“I don’t know if my prostitute friends are in business anymore.”
Oakenshield just points at him and Nori falls quiet. Somehow, the pen he’d stolen from Ori has migrated to his mouth and he chews on it as Oakenshield struggles to construct sentences. “I need someone with experience in people – from all walks of life – and some of the shit that happens with that. I need someone who isn’t going to be surprised if I get a phone call talking about violence or abuse. And someone who knows how council and court systems work.”
Nori can almost hear Frerin gasping in shock at the idea of his perfect older brother swearing. “Right,” he says, for lack of other things to say.
“Do you think you’ve got experience?”
His jaw drops, “You’re offering me a job?”
“I’m not… promising anything. It would be on a trial basis.” Oakenshield doesn’t look like he regrets what he’s saying. He’s still pointing at Nori. “You do anything even remotely illegal and I will drag you through every court in this land if I have to. Are you interested?”
“Why the fuck are you offering me a job?” Nori bites down too hard on the pen in his mouth and spits out shattered plastic. “The last time you spoke to me you blamed me for the death of your brother, and now you want to employ me?”
“I’m simply pointing out there’s an opening,” Oakenshield shrugs. His face didn’t change when Nori brought up Frerin. “It’s up to you if you go for it. I’ll leave you to your job hunt, now.”
Ori’s going to kill him for breaking his pen, and most of Nori’s jobseekers goes on paying Dori rent right now. “Bloody hell.”
“Nori?” Oakenshield pauses at the door, “Give my regards to your brother.”
---
“I know,” Thorin swallows, staring at the bitter dregs of his coffee. “But I’m – I’m trying. To make it – to put it right.”