Work Text:
A Simple Touch
Smaug was dead.
On the surface, that fact seemed like a very good thing, a something that ought to be rejoiced over. It was, actually, quite a boon for the Dwarrow whom Smaug had stolen the Lonely Mountain from and Bilbo was certain that they would celebrate the Great Drake’s death with a fervor unmatched by any other throughout all of the Ages – especially since it had been managed without any further loss of life. The problem was not really that the beast was dead, it was who had done the killing.
Bilbo had – accidentally.
Apparently, Dragons had a weakness to more than just Black Arrows fired from a wind lance. Bilbo had, inadvertently, discovered that they were enormously susceptible to Green Magic as well. Or, at least, Smaug had been.
He had been acting on nothing more than a blinding panic and sheer instinct when he had called upon his Green Touch. Perhaps, subconsciously, he had hoped that the gift that had grown him a bountiful garden, prize-winning tomatoes included, and endeared him to most animals would calm Smaug enough that Bilbo would be able to escape from the Treasury. But the moment Bilbo’s palm had come into contact with Smaug’s scales the Dragon had screeched in absolute agony. Startled by the reaction, Bilbo had tapped into more of his innate power and the result had been, well, it had been Smaug’s death.
On the verge of a nervous fit, Bilbo wondered what Thorin would have to say about the giant, dragon-shaped hedge of multi-hued roses in the middle of his gold and gems.
They were still waiting for him to meet them back at the Secret Door with the Arkenstone, his Dwarrow – somewhere along the way they had become his and he had become theirs – and Bilbo did not have the faintest notion of how to explain what happened. At least, not without earning himself a ridiculously out-of-proportion reaction from them all and probably some silly title that he would spend the rest of his life hating.
And he still had no bloody idea where the stupid stone was.
“Bilbo?” Thorin’s voice echoed down to him.
Well, fuck.
Bilbo looked up from the pile of half-melted gold coins he was perched on to see the rest of the Company staring down at him in absolute shock, “Good evening.”
“We heard the Dragon and thought…” Thorin cautiously started down the steps and then demanded, “What happened?”
Bilbo looked from him to the roses and then back to him, “I didn’t mean to do it, it just sort of happened.”
“Sorry, are you saying that you accidentally turned Smaug into a giant plant?” Nori questioned and then snorted. “Only you, Bilbo.”
He and the others began to follow their king down the stone steps.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a rose bush,” Bofur corrected.
“I thought roses were red,” Kíli said, “Those ones are rainbow. Can roses be rainbow?”
“I’ve heard of white, yellow, and pink ones,” Ori supplied helpfully.
“My innate magic and Smaug’s… had a bit of a reaction,” Bilbo admitted.
“A reaction,” Thorin repeated, “Yes, we can see that.”
“He was chasing me and I touched him and, well,” Bilbo gestured a bit helplessly to the hedge that was all that remained of the once fearsome creature that had devastated an entire people in a single day, “That happened.”
“You touched him?” Thorin sounded more horrified than Bilbo had ever heard him – and Bilbo had borne witness to his vehement reaction upon learning that Bilbo could not swim after their escapade in the barrels – and he began to wade through the treasure at a quicker pace, “He got that close to you?”
“I didn’t see him until I was almost on top of him,” Bilbo confessed, “He was under the gold, and not even the biggest pile of it. When he woke up and realized I was there, he kind of swam through it to get to where I was. I don’t… the Green Touch is harmless.”
“Harmless,” Glóin said, “Right.”
“It is,” Bilbo insisted. “We use it to connect to the earth and to grow food and flowers and even to produce our children. Sometimes we can tame wild animals with it, though not if they’re feral. This is… this has never happened before. Nothing even remotely like this has ever happened before.”
“Has any Hobbit ever interacted with a Dragon before this day?” Balin questioned.
“I very seriously doubt it,” Bilbo frowned, “If any did, there’s no record of it to be found in the Shire.”
“You’ve slain the Dragon,” Thorin proclaimed, reaching the bottom of the pile that Bilbo was on.
“Not on purpose!” Bilbo exclaimed.
“Bilbo Dragons-”
“Finish that statement, Little Lion, and I will never make you maple biscuits again,” Bilbo threatened crossly, his hands firmly on his hips.
Fíli shut his mouth at once.
“Are you hurt?” Thorin asked, reaching up a hand to help him down.
Bilbo accepted it, hopping down to the ground, “No, I’m fine. I don’t suppose we can tell everyone that Smaug was dead when I got in here? That he died of old age or something?”
“Dragons have immortal lifespans,” Thorin replied with an amused smile, “And how would we explain the lack of a body?”
“He flew away in the night?” Bilbo tried.
“And no one noticed?”
“It was a new moon.”
Thorin laughed in delight and then pulled Bilbo into a profound and ardent kiss, a kiss that had, as far as Bilbo was concerned, been a long time coming. Bilbo responded almost automatically, winding his hands in Thorin’s braids and pressing his body as close to the Dwarf’s as possible. He had never felt as safe or as cherished as he did in that moment, as Thorin held him tight, and Bilbo would have liked for it to last forever.
Bilbo had not loved Thorin at first sight, despite knowing that he was his One. Rather, he had spent the first month of their acquaintance wishing for something heavy to hit the rude and unfairly attractive Dwarf over the head with. Slowly, irritation had morphed into a grudging respect and admiration, which was why he had been so stung by Thorin’s dismissal of him after the Stone Giant fiasco. Even when Bilbo stood between Thorin and Azog, ready to defend the former to his last breath, Bilbo could not have said that he loved the Dwarven King; he had just known that he never could have lived with himself if he had not done so. Somewhere between the hug on the Carrock and being guests of the Elven King, that had changed, and genuine affection had blossomed. Bilbo did not believe he could live without Thorin in his life – survive, perhaps, but not live – and he had started to dread the idea of returning to the Shire by the time the Company reached Lake-town.
“Fine,” Bilbo sighed when Thorin gently broke the kiss, “But I’m serious about the title thing. There better not ever be one.”
“As you wish, Ghivashel,” Thorin agreed, tapping his forehead to Bilbo’s with all due consideration for Bilbo’s softer skull. “That’s not a title, it means ‘beloved’ in Khuzdûl.”
Bilbo blinked at him in surprise, “I thought outsiders weren’t allowed to know any of it.”
“You’re not an outsider,” Thorin said simply.
The Company broke out into raucous cheering then, each one of them taking a turn hugging Bilbo and knocking their foreheads against his carefully. Bilbo thought that perhaps there was more meaning to Thorin’s words than he understood, because some of his Dwarrow were crying and smiling at the same time.
“I haven’t found your Arkenstone yet,” Bilbo said once the Company had settled back down a bit. He huffed in mild frustration, “I don’t know how you lot could have possibly expected me to locate it in only a few hours. Do you see how large this room is? It will take months to sort through all of this.”
“I hoped it would be close to the stairs,” Thorin told him, “That’s where I saw it fall when the Dragon came. Smaug likely shifted it somewhere else while he was moving around; this room used to be far more organized.”
“We’ll find it, laddie,” Balin reassured.
“Why is it so important anyway?” Bilbo dared to ask. “Is it very magical?”
“It’s the King’s Jewel, the Heart of the Mountain, and my right to rule,” Thorin explained to him. “When it was discovered, it was seen as a symbol of my grandfather’s divine claim to the throne.”
“You do realize that, according to that bit of logic, you’re saying that, up until the Arkenstone was found, none of your ancestors, including Durin, had the right to rule,” Bilbo pointed out. “Mahal made Durin king same as his wife, Yavanna, made the first Took a thain. Shouldn’t the Stone King’s word alone be enough?”
“Yes, it should be,” Dwalin agreed fiercely.
“When Durin VI lost Moria to the Balrog, some of the other clans took it as Mahal having forsaken the Longbeards,” Thorin revealed, his voice rough, “Several of the Great Lords chose to proclaim themselves kings in their own right during that time and, thus, other Dwarven kingdoms formed – the clans have remained divided ever since. When centuries upon centuries passed without Durin being reborn… well, it wasn’t good. By the time the Arkenstone was mined and brought before my grandfather, he had already been forced to put down two not-so-minor rebellions, the latter of which had claimed my grandmother’s life.”
“I’m sorry,” Bilbo whispered, squeezing Thorin’s hand in sympathy.
“I think losing her is what started him on the path to madness, he loved her more than anything else in this world,” Thorin sighed. “At any rate, the Arkenstone’s very existence was seen by all as a blessing, the first to be bestowed upon the Longbeards in many generations, and those who doubted my grandfather silenced their tongues. Erebor was stabilized and the kingdom began to prosper. The other Dwarf kings, perhaps fearful of what it was purported to mean, swore their allegiance to the one who wielded it in a very public fashion. I was going to use the Arkenstone to secure the armies that I believed killing Smaug would require; now I need to ensure that none of the other kings or lords try to take Erebor for themselves.”
“That’s… sort of terrible, Thorin,” Bilbo determined. “None of those disloyal sods are ever getting any of my biscuits.”
“They hardly deserve them,” Bombur declared, “Your biscuits are works of art.”
“Oh, aye,” Bofur chimed in, “And they should only be consumed by those who can properly appreciate them as such.”
Bilbo smiled at the two of them in thanks and then looked back at Thorin, “I don’t suppose you could provide a description a bit more detailed than ‘large, white jewel’, by any chance? Because, in case you haven’t noticed, there are rather a lot of those lying around in here.”
“It glows with an inner light,” Thorin supplied, “And color dances deep within it.”
“Oh!” Bilbo dashed toward the hedge in realization, crawling promptly into what had been the Dragon’s mouth.
“Bilbo!” Thorin called sharply.
“Hang on,” Bilbo returned, reaching past a thick grouping of leaves and grabbing ahold of something smooth and solid. Bilbo slipped back out onto the gold-coated floor and held out a jewel that physically matched Thorin’s assertions, “Is this it?”
Judging by the gasps the sight of the stone elicited from every member of the Company, it must have been.
“Yes,” Thorin confirmed, accepting the gem with a trembling hand. “How did you know it was there?’
“Smaug had it in the pouch in his throat. I saw something glowing in there when he tried to breathe fire on me.”
“When he tried to what?”
“He was a Dragon, darling. Dragons breathe fire,” Bilbo reminded. “He probably kept the gem in his crop so that no one who entered the Mountain would be able to get to it.”
“I should have never sent you in here alone,” Thorin lamented, “I should have come with you.”
“Thorin, I love you dearly and you’re a marvelous fighter, but you are absolutely wretched when it comes to sneaking. Smaug would have burnt us to a crisp long before I got close enough to… well, to accidentally turn him into a rose hedge,” Bilbo retorted.
Thorin looked offended for all of three seconds and then inclined his head in acknowledgement, “I can’t actually argue with that statement.”
“What are we going to do with the, er, hedge?” Fíli wanted to know.
“It’ll likely wither within a day or so,” Bilbo stated, “There’s no sun, or soil, or water to sustain it in here.”
“And then we’ll have a giant dead bush to worry about,” Dwalin said.
“Better that a giant corpse,” Kíli remarked, “You know, an actual one.”
“Or a live Dragon,” Nori added.
Bifur signed something in Iglishmêk that made Thorin sort of choke and the others snort or giggle in amusement.
“What?” Bilbo inquired.
“He said we could eat the roses,” Thorin answered.
“That’s not actually a terrible idea,” Bilbo gave Thorin a shrug when the Dwarf looked at him dubiously, “Hobbits eat roses all the time. We bake them into cakes and biscuits and breads and pies, steep them into tea, crush them into a very popular sweet glaze for venison and beef, candy them with honey, and even boil them in cream for our Fauntlings to drink.”
His Dwarrow took a minute to contemplate that and then Balin looked at Thorin with a sly grin, “The more you consider the notion, the more it seems like poetic justice, really.”
“I also know how to make ale from the petals,” Bilbo announced, “Though it’s quite strong.”
“I can handle any Hobbitish drink,” Thorin boasted.
Bilbo smirked a bit at that, “I’m going to remind you that you said so.”
END
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Translations (Khuzdûl)
- Ghivashel [Beloved]
- Iglishmêk [Dwarven Sign Language]