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It had been a long week. First he’d been kicked out of the house, again, by his elder brother who swore up and down he was a bad influence on their younger brother. The kid was growing into a fine and upstanding dwarf, even had a position in the Scribe Guild, though he hadn't found anyone to take him under their tutelage it was only a matter of time. The lad was sharp and eager, someone would see and appreciate the zeal. But apparently any time the lad caught wind of some such nonsense Nori was supposedly to have pulled off he’d become a right chattering monkey and get all big eyed at the idea of, what Dori called, romanticized debauchery and what he called freedom. For Mahal’s hammer the lad was all of fifty years of age, he needed less coddling and more actual living is all, it didn’t mean he was going to follow in his shady older brother’s footsteps!
Then he’d been caught in a brawl that had absolutely nothing to do with him. The family of miners had been drinking quite merrily, singing away as you please, he’d been half inclined to join them himself iff’n he hadn’t still been nursing some hurt over Dori’s latest defection. He hadn’t even done the deed he’d been tossed for! And that rankled almost worse than the tossing, as it had been a true jewel of a heist. He wished he’d thought of it first. But suddenly live and let live had fallen off the menu as a pack of rather surly drunks who he recognized from the coal shafts apparently had gotten fed up with the idea that someone wouldn’t let their lot in life destroy all their joy and had advanced on the cheerful group. Still he’d been well out of the line of fire until three of the bastards had tried to cut the twin braids off one of the miners, apparently his funny looking hat was offensive enough to warrant the shaming, and he’d just not been able to let that go. So with a heavy sigh he’d rushed into the thick of it and had gotten three new friends and a shiner for his worries. The Ur clan had at least given him a place to sleep off his bruises but he knew he couldn’t linger with upright folk too long or else they’d get caught in some of his underworld shenanigans.
As it were, none other than his all time favorite Royal Guardsman, Dwalin, son of Fundin, ambushed him on his way from the Ur residence. How the bloke could be so damn dire with a family name like Fundin was beyond his comprehension but he’d be damned iff’n the lad didn’t give him a run for his money every time they crossed paths. Sometimes he was sure this was the only expression of joy the guard was capable of as he hurled curses at Nori through the streets. By the end of that night he’d managed to just barely slink away and find himself in the comforting embrace of his fellow thieves.
So with one eye on his back one on his front and another half dozen pointed at the numerous underhanded degenerates he’d managed to thoroughly piss off (or owed money) the star haired dwarf made his way to one of his favorite handlers to see the man had some ready work available. As it turned out he did, some hoity little pomp had come avisitin’ the royals of Durin’s lot and had rubbed a few people the wrong way. Apparently there was a high price for someone to go off and nick a number of his wears, one necklace in particular for personal reasons undisclosed, which of course meant everyone worth their salt knew and he found out in short order it was a jilted lover’s gift. Well there was nothing Nori liked better than justice served with a side of coin so off he went.
It had been going well enough, he’d tailed the behemoth (truly, larger than that red headed Ur lad Bombur and not half as fun to sit and chat with over a cold one either) for all of three days and nights. Found him to be annoying, lewd, and disgustingly entitled. The bastard had even gone so far as to manhandle some wee tot in the middle of the market as if he’d every right to. The lass didn’t even have her whiskers yet and he’d almost come after the bastard when he’d read the blatant panic in a pair of pretty brown eyes, but his favored guardsman had gut punched the shit so hard he’d passed out then and there. Before anything else could be done the lass had away and he’d thought this would be his greatest heist to date, in honor of the wee flower and all things good left in this shithole.
But as swiftly as things had been looking up they suddenly took an amazingly alarming swan dive when he reached his goal and found the heist already underway. He was beyond shocked to find the rooms ransacked, the necklace gone, and the tub o’ lard floating rather precariously on a small raft in his personal hot spring; his beard was on his head as a garland. As he watched in no little bit of awe tempered in disappointment he caught the merest glimpse of shifting shadow to his left and took off after it. Letting his sharp eyes deign as much as they could from the shifting shadows Nori placed the thing at barely three feet and potentially plump. He wasn’t sure if it was a woman or not but he was putting his coin on yes just based on the grace she was handling the leaps and bounds of the rocky mountainside with as they rushed through the dwarrow town.
He tailed her for a good ten leagues before he’d had enough chasing and decided it was time to find out just what was hiding under that hood. Picking up some speed he leaped down from the story above and right into her path, grabbing a hold of some rather slender arms he smashed the wee thing into the rock wall, holding her there with his body. Flush against the thing he confirmed she was in fact female, a rather buxom one at that, all sweet curves that cushioned his own solid frame intriguingly. His shark’s smile only had a moment to settle before she washed it away with her first lilting words, “Well, it certainly took you long enough, I thought you were going to let me lead you about by the nose all night. Now if you’ll let me go we could have a civilized conversation.”
Raising one braided brow at the imp he looked down into the hooded face, only her pert little mouth with its plump red lips showing, flashing a full set of shiny white choppers in a salacious smile. Nori was no fool, but he found himself intrigued and couldn’t find it in himself to willingly unmask such a curious creature. They were of a profession at the least and he felt a need to extend a certain level of courtesy. She was, after all, raising bits of interest that he’d thought long dead to curiosity, and not all of them centered in his pants. “Sorry to disappoint lass, but I’ve a policy about people who steal from me. I don’t let them go quite so easy as that,” said pleasantly enough as he shifted his hold a bit to place her hands more comfortably at their side, interlocking their fingers. This had the added bonus of appearing to any passersby as a tryst rather than an unpleasant meeting, though honestly he wasn’t quite sure which he was more willing to see this turn into. The night was still young as it were and she felt absolutely glorious under him.
Her mouth, more expressive than he’d thought a mouth could be, puckered a bit as she replied, “Stolen from you? Now that’s odd, I could have sworn I’d borrowed a lovely adornment from some grotesque beast, not from a common thief in the night.”
His grin was back and quite suggestive as he leaned closer to her hidden continence and all but purred, “Well that’s not very pleasant little one, I’d wager a little time spent with myself and you’ll find nothing common about me at all.” He was so close he felt the shiver run through her as he leaned just that much further down, lips so close to being flush with those intriguingly plump rubies –
A rather sharp silver blade was suddenly pressed into his scrotum, ending all pleasant thoughts of a charming congress with the rare thing in his hands as he turned his head to see a second cloaked figure standing at the ready, this one’s mouth drawn in a smile that was little more than a showing of teeth. The creature that had his future children at blade point growled into the suddenly tense night air, “Let the chit go and you may come out of this no less a male than how you came into it.”
Now, though she’d used such a common phrasing he was, as he said before, no fool, and Nori could practically feel the protective mother instinct where it was running off the new fiend in waves. Sighing at both, the loss of a pleasant evening and his luck with overprotective parental figures, he released the dainty little minx’s hands and stepped back, allowing room for her to scuttle away behind the enraged beast behind him. He was trying some really fast thinking, fully believing he was about to be skewered as he’d had his fair share of near misses with a bed fellow’s family before when suddenly he was shocked for the second time that night by the wee one. “Please. He didn’t harm me in the slightest and I was the one who let him catch me.” The chicky laid a restraining hand on the brandished blade and seemed to be staring the other down. With a grumble he found himself no longer at blade point and no less surprised.
Never one to miss an opportunity, however, Nori smirked as he swept into his original pursuit’s space and stole a sweet kiss from lips gone lax and a promising handful of a rather plump arse that had a wholly gratifying breathe bleed into him. Before her mum could make out more than a half snarled curse he’d swept away up to the level he’d fallen from to begin with. Though he’d not come away with what he’d intended to that night he couldn’t say he wasn’t satisfied with the take.