Chapter Text
Thorin fumbles with the scarf – which he was, against his protests, well-advised to wear – and glances down at it with a frown. The blasted thing will damage his eyes if he stared at the bright red piece of cloth any second longer. “Pray tell, why exactly do I have to do this?”
Bilbo shoots him a glance over his shoulder that is far too merry for Thorin’s liking. “Because you lost the bet. And now is the perfect situation to redeem my betting price.”
“I knew there was a perfectly valid reason I haven’t ever participated in bets before,” Thorin grumbles into his beard. Once again he is asking himself why he has agreed to the bet in the first place. That he already sweats like a pig under all those layers doesn’t lighten his mood in the slightest.
“Because you thought it would be easy to win.”
Oh, he said that out loud.
“And it should have been. It was about Fíli and Kíli after all.” Thorin scoffs, rolling his eyes as he thinks about his nephews – who he loves dearly of course, but it is not only his kingly duties that have further painted his hair grey in those last years after the reconquest of Erebor.
“You don’t give them enough credit.” A light chuckle slips from Bilbo's lips.
“Are you sure?”
Regarding Thorin with just a raised eyebrow, Bilbo hums. “By the way: It is not only me who is friends with the Elves.”
“Kìli and Tauriel are basically already betrothed, so that doesn’t count.” The smirk on Thorin's lips speaks volumes.
Bilbo laughs heartily. “I wasn’t talking about them, you oaf.” The Hobbit turns his head to look at the Dwarf – and there is a mischievous glint in his eye that Thorin does not like; not at all.
“I may have helped to bridge the chasms between you and a particular Elvenking, but I had not the slightest idea what I kicked off by doing so.”
“What is that supposed to mean now?”
Shrugging his shoulders, Bilbo chirps: “Oh, I don’t know. I just think that you two get along quite well now – and that was most certainly not my doing.”
“Oh, you’re vastly mistaken, my dear Hobbit.” Thorin laughs. In our hobbit’s ears it sounds a mite hysterical. “Thranduil and I merely adjusted to one another to a level where we can mostly control our impulses to kill ourselves as soon as the other opens his mouth.” The dwarf clicks his tongue and darts a look at Bilbo.
“If you say so.” The Hobbit shrugs before nodding at the guard who stands beside the great entrance of Erebor and bows to Thorin as he lets them pass.
“Bilbo?” Thorin admonishes, drawing out the ‘o’. “What are you implying with that once again?”
A grin tugs at the hobbit's lips. “That will have to wait now, for we need to make haste. We don’t want to let them wait!”
And with that, Bilbo picks up his pace, his large feet carrying him easily through the snow that nearly reaches his thighs.
Thorin calls after him with a confused frown upon his face, “Let whom wait?”, but the Hobbit has already scurried off over the great, white glistening plain.