Chapter Text
There are many of the old policies put into place by Thorin’s ancestors that he’s discarded since ascending the throne. Most of them he altered in exile to make accommodation for their suddenly nomadic society, but there’s one that has withstood the test of time which Thorin has reluctantly come to appreciate even though it was bitter to him for a time; the hour of contemplation in the afternoons where all civic and social labor halts until Durin’s bell rings in the throne room.
It has historically been a time of peace and reflection, but in the years of exile it became an hour of mourning when his people would sing to each other of their lost home in order to keep it fresh in their collective memory. Perhaps they believed that Erebor would never truly be lost to them so long as they kept it in their chants.
The first time that Durin’s Bell rang after the death of the dragon and the Battle of Five Armies many of of the old ones, those who –like Thorin- still remembered its haunting tone from the old days, sank to their knees and wept to hear it. Thorin will always remember that first day when the hour of grief became an hour of celebration once more.
It is his habit of late to spend that hour in his grandmother’s private rock garden, a place left miraculously untouched by Smaug’s long occupation. The crystals there have become overgrown without his nana’s careful hands there to grind down unwanted growth, but even in (or perhaps because of) their wildness Thorin finds them beautiful.
He does not expect to find anyone waiting there for him, but even so there is Bilbo sitting on a padded bench with a large leather-bound book balanced on one knee as he writes in it. Thorin approaches quietly and reads over Bilbo’s shoulder for a moment as he scribbles away.
“I know you’re there, Thorin.” He comments as he finishes a line and sets down his quill. It’s a shabby thing that’s lost most of its feather and has been trimmed so much that it’s almost spent. Thorin makes a note to have him gifted with a metal stylus; perhaps a gold one with steel nibs and a tooled leather grip. How fine that would look in a Hobbit’s sturdy hands.
Bilbo fixes him with a look. “You’re targeting my stationary now, aren’t you?” He sighs and smiles. “Do you know, I’d forgotten how you look when you’re plotting something. Tell me, did you ever have a bow crafted out of ebony for Kili? Or a mithril hauberk for Fili?” His blue eyes are laughing at him, but Thorin finds he doesn’t mind.
“I was able to find the hauberk, but Kili disabused me of the notion that ebony would make a good hunting bow.” Thorin sits down next to Bilbo and closes his eyes. This, this is what he’s been missing most. “Apparently it’s too heavy. We commissioned a blackwood recurve from Bard’s bowyer that seems to make him happy.” He cracks an eye and peers back at Bilbo’s book. It seems to be a recounting of the company’s arrival at Bag End …only…
“I don’t recall falling in the door with the others.” Thorin glances at Bilbo with suspicion. “I arrived later.”
“Did you?” Bilbo asks. “Oh, yes. I suppose you did. You were lost. I remember now.” He smiles and starts to cross out the last sentence he wrote only to pause with Thorin’s hand over his.
“I was not lost.” Thorin corrects him. “I was only delayed.”
“Is that so?” Bilbo tilts his head and grins. “How would you have me tell it then? That you arrived on time and got squashed under Bombur when I opened the door too quickly or that you arrived several hours late having gotten lost in the four and a half square miles that is Hobbiton? I clearly remember one of those things happening, but you’ve just told me that I am confused.”
“Leave it as it is.” Thorin grumbles and is pleased when Bilbo sets the book aside with the most recent page under a blotting paper. He is better pleased when Bilbo allows himself to be pulled into an embrace. “You are writing our story.”
“I am.” Bilbo agrees as he relaxes into Thorin’s side. This is not a thing they ever had much opportunity for. Sitting and enjoying each other’s company shouldn’t feel like a decadent treat, but it does. “I started it before we left Bag End, but I haven’t had much time to work on it. It was a fine adventure. I think it needs to be remembered.”
“Perhaps not all of it.” Thorin murmurs, thinking back to one particular evening after they’d escaped the Misty Mountains and woke to find the pelt of Azog’s white warg nailed to a tree outside Beorn’s door. That was the first night Thorin allowed himself to touch Beorn’s excellent mead, only to discover first hand why his men had been suffering such splitting hangovers since they arrived. Many things happened that evening. Some of them he regrets. Others he can’t quite force himself to.
“Ah, yes.” Bilbo chuckles with his eyes closed. “Some parts of it I do plan to keep for myself. Future generations only need so much edification.”
Thorin leans his cheek on the crest of Bilbo’s head and breathes in the smell of him. It’s heady and familiar. “Do you recall our time in Beorn’s lands?” He asks softly.
“Do I remember Beorn or do I remember when you pinned me to the wall underneath the stairs and started talking to me in Khuzdul?” Bilbo guesses and laces their fingers together when Thorin nods. “Yes, I remember. I’m frankly surprised you do since I also remember how much you had to drink that evening. Do you know? I had no idea what was going on until you started kissing me. I thought I’d made you angry again.”
“Did I frighten you?” Thorin asks and thinks back on his past conduct. There’s no excuse, not really. Only he can remember those days when every morning brought a new danger (or sometimes an old one) and it seemed like the ground was crumbling under them as they tried desperately to outrun it.
It was not, perhaps, the best time for him to see –to truly see the strange little creature who’d followed him out of the kindly western lands and into certain danger. It was an even worse time to discover the most unlikely of kindred spirits residing in a small soft body with quick, clever little hands. They spoke more words to one another in those days after the Eagles delivered them to the Carrock than Thorin has ever said to anyone not his sister… not since Erebor fell.
Dwarves do not love easily. Less than three-quarters of his people take lovers and only half of them ever marry, but when Dwarves do feel love then they love greedily and without warning. Thorin has since learned his lesson about that particular vice, but this happened long before the Arkenstone was uncovered from Smaug’s ill-gotten horde. He had never expected to desire another person and having come to do so in the last century of his life made him impatient. It made him demanding. It made him reckless.
“Not once I understood what was on your mind.” Bilbo ducks his head and may well be blushing. “Fear was the furthest thing from my mind after that. You know I always wondered, but never had the chance to ask; what exactly was it you were saying that night? I assumed it was a little dirty at first, but later I thought it might have been some kind of poetry.”
“It was… poetry of a sort.” Thorin can hear Dis’ admonition echoing in his ears. “It was more like a set of promises set to verse.”
“Oh?” Bilbo smiles. “Did you make good on those promises?”
“Some of them.” Thorin sighs. “Not others, not the way I meant to; not the way I ought to have.”
“…ah?” Bilbo goes quiet for a little while. Finally “I never properly apologized for what I did back then. I tried when Bombur brought me to your sickroom, but there was… there was no time. You hushed me and I let you. What passed between us at the Gate was my fault more than yours, if that is what you are speaking of. I did it knowing you would be angry with me. You cannot blame yourself for that.” He coughs and turns a dull red. “If you are. Were. I realize I’m assuming a great deal and…”
Thorin closes a hand over Bilbo’s mouth to stem the tide of words. “That is one of the promises I failed to keep, but perhaps not in the way you are imagining.” He releases Bilbo’s mouth. “Had anyone else done to me what you did, I might have reacted better. I should have reacted better. I should have listened. If I had remembered my honor then I would have.” He drags his thumb across Bilbo’s lower lip. If they were in a ballad then perhaps his Halfling burglar’s lips would feel like rose petals under his calloused touch, but this is reality and the truth is that they’re a bit chapped from wind and the dehydration that inevitably comes from a long journey. Still, Thorin finds he prefers that Bilbo’s clever little mouth and easy smile over all the velvet his fortune could buy. “One of the promises I made to you that night was to value your counsel above all others. I broke it. History will say that I lost my honor when I failed to receive Bard’s men into the mountain, but that isn’t true. It will always be when you called me a fool and I did not listen.”
“I never said that.” Bilbo huffs, but he’s blushing so perhaps he isn’t angry. “Many things I did say, but never that.”
“Perhaps I said it to myself then.” Thorin agrees. He’s certainly called himself worse things in the small hours of the morning.
“Here now, that…” Bilbo swallows and shakes his head. “Thorin, that… what you said. Perhaps I’m hearing what I want to, but that didn’t sound like courting verses.”
“No.” Thorin says and glares at a hovering aide he can see out the corner of his eye. A servant arrives to shoo him away and he swears that he can see the hem of Dis’ skirt when the door closes behind them.
She would take it on herself to see to it that they aren’t disturbed. He wonders what would happen if he tried to leave right now without confessing all.
Probably nothing good.
“It was a pledge.” Thorin turns to look out onto the sparkling crystal garden. It’s a safe direction. “My kind do not love easily and some will tell you that we do not love well, but -whatever else we may be- we are at least constant. Our hearts, once given, are gone for good …even if the sentiment is never returned. That is reflected in the vows we give to each other. If you are wondering why I never contacted you then it is because I wished to return a freedom that I took from you.” He takes a breath. “I do not say this to create a sense of obligation in you. That was never my intention and was the reason I kept my distance, but with the… children… I had hoped that you would… that is to say…”
Bilbo catches him by the chin and turns Thorin’s face to his. He is frowning and is sitting with one hand braced on his knee. “Thorin Oakenshield, did you get soused on mead and marry me underneath Beorn’s staircase?”
“I may have done that. Yes.” Thorin’s hands close over his knees of their own volition as he braces himself for Bilbo’s reaction.
“Well.” Bilbo deflates and releases Thorin’s chin. “Well.” He says again, blinking in confusion. “We are a bass-ackwards pair, aren’t we?”
“It does look that way.” Thorin reaches out (still cautious after all this) and takes Bilbo’s hand in his own. “If you permit it, I would perhaps like to do that again. Properly this time.”
Bilbo gives him a searching look before closing his free hand over Thorin’s. “Thorin, when I thought you’d died I went home and planted your children in my garden because I couldn’t bear to live in a world without at least some part of you still in it.” He leans forward and presses his lips against Thorin’s in a chaste kiss. “Of course I’ll marry you. Thank you for asking this time.” He pulls away with a smile that is very nearly wicked. “…I’d have probably said yes the first time too. You’re a compelling person.”
“You’re the one who bore my children, Halfling.” Thorin pulls Bilbo into his lap and into a deeper kiss. “Dis will be insufferable. She’s been on me to have you fetched from the Shire ever since I confessed to her what I had done. Dwarfish women do not suffer their families to be divided easily.”
“I knew I liked her for a reason.” Bilbo muses and soothes Thorin’s hair away from his face. “Must you be anywhere soon?” His voice drops to a husky murmur. “Only it occurs to me that we were interrupted in the middle of our ‘hello’s then we were side-tracked.”
“There is nothing I must do that cannot keep or be done by another.” Thorin lies and lifts Bilbo to his feet. “Come.”
Bilbo allows himself to be tugged into what is technically a servant’s stairwell, but has always been used as a private shortcut for Thorin’s family from the public areas of the Royal quarter into the private ones. Bilbo makes a soft surprised noise when the hidden stair leads them up to the rooms that he has been sharing with their sons –technically the Dowager Queen’s suite for all that it has been reappointed with the old shabby furniture that Dis brought with her in the caravan from their settlement in Ered Luin.
“Gracious.” He breathes, half laughing and half groaning. “You Dwarves are certainly fond of your secret passages. Come, there is a bed through here…” He says and pulls Thorin in the direction of the small bedroom he appropriated as his own; a lady companion’s chamber, unless Thorin is misremembering. The boys –born, adopted, and borrowed- all share the larger bed in the main chamber.
“No.” Thorin says, much to his beloved’s confusion. “I know of a better one.”
He becomes further confused when Thorin leads him through the sitting room, into the communal bathing chamber, and through the locked door that leads into the King’s receiving room.
Thorin’s valet blinks slowly at the sight of his master arriving through the bathroom, takes in the sight of Bilbo at Thorin’s side (prettily flushed and attempting to hide behind him), then bows and takes his leave all without saying a single word.
Good man.
“Thorin…” Bilbo is looking about with a crinkled brow and Thorin does not blame him. The furnishings here are in no better shape than those in the dowager’s suite.
For all that Thorin once dreamed out loud of chairs carved out of solid gold and silk carpets, luxury is at a premium in Erebor. Too many families still sleep together in barracks intended for soldiers and unwed miners with only a few blankets as a mattress. Now that the mines are producing once more and no longer under the constant threat of collapse everyone’s focus must be on repairing the damage left behind by Smaug. It is extensive and difficult to diagnose.
Bilbo looks around them, taking in the small dais where Thorin receives reports from his lawyers, politicians, courtiers, and soldiers in private. He looks to the ancient reliefs carved into the walls depicting the Longbeards being driven from Khazad-dum and the subsequent founding of Erebor. He looks at Thorin’s old reinforced oak branch shield, retrieved from the Misty Mountains and mounted with honor above his throne. Then he turns to Thorin and sighs.
“Your nephews placed me in the Royal apartments, didn’t they.”
“They thought to help me.” Thorin chuckles and draws him back towards the bedroom. “Come here and if you are upset with them then I will soothe you.”
“Soothe me?” Bilbo asks with a smile. “I like the sound of that.”
In the end, Thorin thinks perhaps he is the one who ends up being soothed. Bilbo takes great pleasure in mapping every inch of his body with eager hands and a gentle mouth. Thorin returns the favor and takes leisure in taking Bilbo apart piece by piece until the only word his Halfling can remember is Thorin’s name and ‘more’.
Time has altered them both in equal measure. There are veins of gold in the rich honey-gold of bilbo’s hair and his flesh is thinner in some places yet harder in others. He still looks like a grocer, but perhaps one whose stall it isn’t entirely safe to pilfer from. Thorin knows he looks like the veteran that he is. Two wars and a life of hard labor have all left their marks upon him, but Bilbo takes his time in searching out every last scar and kissing them until Thorin feels like the young able-bodied prince he once was.
Climax comes not as an earthquake, but as a gentle tide of warmth breaking over them both and Thorin basks (as he has not in just under a decade) in the glow of its aftermath.
“You will move in here with me.” Thorin informs his drowsing lover. “I will brook no arguments.”
“Well certainly.” Bilbo agrees sleepily. “Unless you were planning on hiding in my bed instead? I would not mind, only I think they would come looking for you after a while. I must warn you. Bobbin is prone to nightmares and when that happened then nothing will do but everyone sleeps together.”
“It is of no matter.” Thorin says and turns the inviting image over in his mind. He is a dwarf, after all, and it’s no secret that dwarves are happiest when all their treasures are within arm’s reach. “My bed is large. There are some privileges of rank left to me.”
“Is that so?” Bilbo brushes his hair out of his eyes. “Then perhaps I will hand over the problem of how to get poor Samwise home to the Shire to you. He came with me to see Elves, but the ones he did meet asked him a great many questions that he felt they had no business asking him. Now he’s off the idea of them all together. I am hoping that meeting Dwarves will have been of some consolation.”
“What did he expect from Elves if not nosey questions and a disrespect of proper boundaries?” Thorin snorts.
“I think he fancied the idea of having some drift past him close enough to see properly and look down at him with an aura of superiority and mystery.” Bilbo guesses and settles his head on Thorin’s good shoulder, which is most agreeable. “The reality was a disappointment.”
“If that is the case then I will send him home with a troop of my soldiers via Mirkwood.” Thorin says. The treaty between the forest and the mountain is holding up well so long as neither race attempts to speak to one another in person. “Thranduil’s people excel at that sort of thing and enjoy having an audience.”
“Only if someone has put a bridge up over that blasted river.” Bilbo grumbles. “…or if your men know not to send the supplies over in a single go.”
“I will advise them.” Thorin promises and kisses the crown of Bilbo’s head. “You will not regret staying here, my love. I will do all in my power to ensure it.”
“Thorin, the only thing I ever regretted was leaving in the first place.” Bilbo tells him with a soft secret smile. He settles back against Thorin’s side and they doze for a time until Bilbo stirs and sits up. “There is nothing you can give me that will make me happier than I already am… except…”
“…except?” Thorin prods him.
Bilbo props himself up on one elbow and idly swirls his fingertips in Thorin’s chest hair. “…perhaps you can tell me why people keep bowing to Bobbin in the corridors.”
“Ah, yes.” Thorin coughs. “About that…”
-fin