#ofahattersmind

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For Kili, there is no “first time.”  From the day he’s born, he seems oddly mercurial, his mood shifting suddenly from time to time.  He’s a cheerful, loving child, outgoing and friendly nearly to a fault (“We don’t talk to strangers,” he recites after his mother, but once someone says hello, they’re not a stranger anymore!).  But there are times when he goes quiet and thoughtful, watching the world instead of forcing himself on it.  He likes those times, he says.  He feels peaceful.  Like he’s not alone.  

“That’s our Kili,” his mother says fondly, watching him go from spinning in hyperactive circles to curling up happily on the couch, watching the crackling fire. 

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Kili hears words first.  Perhaps it should frighten him, but it doesn’t.  It feels like his quiet times, and the voice in his head isn’t saying anything scary.  It’s a little boy voice, like his, and it’s studiously practicing multiplication tables.  Kili’s years from learning them, though when the day comes he’ll already know them and won’t quite be able to explain how. 

In the stories about soul bonds, the first communication is usually dramatic and meaningful, the beginning of something otherworldly.

For Kili, it makes his nines tables a sinch five years later.

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Fili’s parents die when he’s twelve.  His uncle takes him in, serious Thorin with his Durin-blue eyes and limited understanding of how children work.  He is the one who tells Fili about soulbonds, how rare they are, how their minds meet across the entire world.  He suspects Fili has one.

“And if you do,” he says, as gently as he knows how, “they’ll be feeling all the pain you’re feeling, and might be very scared by it.”

Maybe it’s a dirty trick, using a boy’s empathy for others to dry his tears and toughen up, but it appears to work.  Fili stops crying so much, starts getting out of bed and living life.

But what Kili feels, far away, isn’t the facade but the real thing.

His parents worry and fuss and arrange for therapy as he cries himself to sleep, night after night.

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Fili is rather secretive by nature.  He doesn’t want to bother anyone into worrying about him, and by the time he’s fourteen, he certainly knows they’d worry if they knew he talks to himself in his head all the time. The fact that the voice is different from his own only makes it more disturbing.  

I hate living with Thorin he’ll sulk, because Thorin is trying but he isn’t Fili’s parents. And his own mind answers Yeah he seems like a and a stuttering pause before dick that makes Fili laugh.  

And then he’ll find himself defending Thorin, who isn’t so bad, and the voice makes up a silly song about Thorin’s tendency to talk like it’s 1854 until Fili is sprawled in bed grinning to himself over how clever the voice in his head is, and why can’t he be that clever in real life?

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Kili is an open book, and he forgets not to just talk back to the voice in his head.  It’s cute when he’s a little boy with his invisible friend, but the older he gets the more concerned the adults in his life get.  

He doesn’t know about the quiet meetings among counselors, teachers, and his parents.  He doesn’t really understand the new doctor who tries to convince him the voice isn’t real.  

He doesn’t like the summer he has to leave home and go stay in a hospital for two weeks during his vacation.  He’s furious, and lonely, and everyone is telling him to lie about the friend in his mind, but he’s not a good liar by nature.

I’ll know the truth his brain-friend says.  We’ll know.  Just tell them you don’t and then tell me you do.  It’ll make them happy.

Kili is reluctant, but he does as he’s told.

He still slips up sometimes,and he sees the worry in his parents’ eyes and laughs it off.  He’s a class clown, right?  He can get rid of these things.

Only his friend knows he hates it, hates the lies, curls up in his covers and sniffles some nights, feeling like a bad person.  

For a while, his friend promises to go away, and leave him alone. But that is so much worse, because it’s quiet in his head and he’s all alone and. “Is this what people want me feel?” he asks the dark, arms wrapped around a well-worn blush manatee he’s too old for as well (keeps it under the bed so his parents won’t take it away, as his friend suggested).  “It’s awful.”

And he tells his friend just how awful it is, until he comes back.

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It’s sensible enough to name his inner voice Kili, Fili figures.  As good as anything else.  It is just an aspect of himself.  A..creative one.  Who tells stories about a life different from him.  Who lives out some of Fili’s fears (is he not quite sane?? Is his inner voice too much??  Don’t writers and such have this??  It’s fine, it’s fine).  Who is warm and funny and optimistic in a way Fili isn’t, but wants to be.  

Just a way of thinking things through.  It’s fine if he gives it a name.

He hopes.

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His friend’s name is Fili, and Kili loves how they match. It’s like destiny in his favorite tv show!  They’re meant to be the best of friends!  The show is all about a legend about soulmates being bound from birth, and talking to each other, and finding each other and--

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Fili visits the library, and researches, and wonders.

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It happens on a lovely fall day in Fili’s home town. Fili is working on his post graduate degree in business administration - not the most interesting, but it’ll help out his uncle’s business, and that’s a guaranteed job that will pay enough that he can hone his own hobbies and interests on his off time. He’s still sensible, but that doesn’t mean he can’t turn some of that practicality to funding his personal interest in writing and travel. 

He’s also working at the business’s central office, actual pay instead of an internship, so he’s stayed close to home.  He’s saving money for a trip down south, for warm weather and sprawling beaches that remind him of stories he’s heard.  Or.  Made up.  Via Kili.

Fili tosses hair back over his shoulder, adjusts his coat, and walks into his favorite park.  The trees here were selected to look as colorful as possible in autumn, and he loves it.  Best time of year, hands down.

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Unlike Fili, Kili traveled for university.  He’s on the archery and lacrosse teams, with actual scholarships, and he’s studying English, which is mostly so he can go on into a proper specialty in myths and folktales.  He secretly believes he is a folk tale, despite the counseling and medications to convince him otherwise.  He loves the city, filled with carefully maintained parks and currently a chaos of fall colors.  It’s too hot back home for anything like this-

He sees someone out of the corner of his eye, and turns his head with practiced nonchalance for a better look.  Kili is a man who appreciates the human form.  Oh ho, he thinks, he’s hot.

And he is, all long golden hair and neat beard and fur lined leather jacket.  He’s shorter than Kili, but more solid.  He looks delicious, in the best way.

Stop creeping people out, says Fili in his head, and Kili laughs.

The man stops, frowning a little.”Odd,” he says aloud in a soft tenor voice that makes Kili’s heart thump.

He gives his head a little shake before looking around.  Blue eyes- so blue Kili can make them out from a fair distance - flicker in Kili’s direction.  He doesn’t seem to have a bit of Kili’s secret shyness.  He smiles, slow and inviting.

Never mind, I’ve found a pretty one, too, Fili says in Kili’s mind.

Kili nearly chokes on his own spit.  

The blond man turns and walks closer, more than a hint of swagger in his steps. 

“Hey,” he says smoothly.

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Kili feels his jaw drop.  His heart is racing.  He can hear it in his ears.  He bungee jumped once, Fili refusing to have anything to do with it.  It felt like this, like ziplines and roller coasters that flip you upside down.

He clicks his jaw shut.  

“Ah...hey,” he says back, intelligently.

---

Fili feels a flash of concern, and steps closer.  “You okay?”  He puts his hands up.  “Promise I’m not a serial killer after tourists.  I’m honestly just flirting.”

---

“I’m not a tourist!”  It’s not what Kili means to say, because he knows, in his bones, who this guy is.  He wonders why he never really thought about what Fili must look like.  He’d have thought taller, but everything else…

Yum.

“I’ve been here a year!”

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“Oh, pardon.”  Fili grins and bows like an old-fashioned gentleman.  “Practically a local, then.  Does that mean you’re familiar with the Ri Family Teashop?”

Fili is forward, but not usually this forward.  But somehow, he wants to know this person.

Or already knows him.

Something.

----

Kili starts to grin.  “Are you asking me to tea?” he asks, because oh, good, Fili knows him too.

“Hmm.  I don’t know.  My mother said never to have tea with strangers.”  Fili holds a hand.  “Fili Durin, local peacekeeper and not an axe murderer, and you are?”

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The cutie is staring at him, and the stare is starting to look singularly unimpressed.  “You know who I am, Fili.”

“Ah, afraid not,” Fili answers, but there’s a tug in his belly like he’s lying to his uncle Thorin about why he was out so late as a teenager.  “But I very much hope to.”

The definitely a nine sighs and puts his hands on his hips.  “I honestly thought you were smarter than this.  But you can’t be completely perfect, I guess.”  But he’s smiling, fit to battle the sun, and Fili can’t even work up a sense fo indignation.  “It’s me, Fili.  It’s Kili.”

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Fili will deny it until they are old and grey, and Kili will just keep telling the truth anyway.

Fili’s eyes roll back in his head, and he stumbles, and Kili grabs Fili in his strong arms like the hero he is.  It’s not fair to say Fili passes out, maybe fades a bit would be more accurate.

Either way, he regrets it forever because it makes him the damsel who wakens (blinks and sees better, because he wasn’t unconscious or anything that dramatic, correct?) in the arms of a stranger who is no stranger at all.  And dammit, Kili even kisses him awake.

(It’s soft and chaste and sweet and Kili, a press of lips just like his voice, beloved and real and everything Fili ever wanted to be real.)

“Hi,” Kili says again, grinning down at him.  “Welcome back.”

Fili will argue later that he didn’t go anywhere and he would have been fine and etc. etc, but for now, he reaches up from his awkward arching slouch in Kili’s arms and brushes hair from those playful hazel eyes, and tugs him down for their second kiss.

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