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atlantablackRating: T+
Word Count: 3,883
No Content Warnings:
Story Status: complete
Summary:
“It will all be alright, master burglar,” Thorin says from behind him, placing a hand on the back of his neck.
"You can’t know that,” he says, but he doesn’t shake Thorin off. Thinks that if he could, he’d simply let Thorin hold him, solid and grounding, until the remaking of the world. It would be safer.
And it would, after a time, be entirely boring. But he still quietly wishes for it.
"I can’t,” Thorin says agreeably, turning Bilbo around with his other hand and pressing their foreheads together again. “But I will make it so. For you. For Fili. For Kili. For the company. For all of Erebor.”
Bilbo doesn’t know how long they stand in his room just holding each other, but at some point during the whole sorry affair Thorin lowers his head and rests his forehead against Bilbo’s in the same way he often does with his nephews. There is a long period of time where they simply stand there breathing each other’s air. Bilbo’s heart is a treacherous thing, thundering in his chest, and he clenches his fists against Thorin’s armor hard enough that his fingers start to cramp.
“What do we do now?” he finally asks, not moving back, the words barely a whisper between them.
“Now, master burglar,” Thorin says, soft and affectionate in a way Bilbo’s never quite heard him, “we plan.”
“We can’t plan for everything.”
“Aye, but we can try.”
“Yes, I suppose we can try,” he echoes, feeling very small and very underprepared.
☀︎
They migrate to the edge of his bed eventually, hands anxiously clasped together, and talk in low tones about the journey to Erebor and all its perils. He feels that if they talk above anything other than hushed tones and whispers the whole thing will dissolve in their hands, the Valar changing their mind and deciding that actually they don’t deserve a second chance at all.
Bilbo doesn’t even know if that’s possible but he’s not eager to find out. Or rather, he would prefer some type of surety that this is permanent and real but he knows that he likely won’t ever receive one.
The only thing they can readily agree on is that they need to find a different route through the misty mountain, neither of them eager to deal with the stone giants or the goblins again. Bilbo thinks of his ring, thinks of all the situations it got him out of, and feels a pang of longing to have it once again despite the danger in retrieving it. But he also thinks of how it’s a miracle they all made it out of those caves the first time and quite frankly, he doesn’t care to bet the company’s safety on those odds staying in their favor.
“We should still make for Rivendell,” he says for the third time, trying not to laugh at the way Thorin scowls.
“We do not need their help,” Thorin replies again
“No, but it’s a good resting place and a place to fill our packs. Especially if we end up chased by the orcs again.”
“No.”
“Well do you have some other brilliant plan then!” He throws his hands up, cursing the stubbornness of dwarves and how it did absolutely nothing to dampen his affection for them.
Thorin scowls even harder, opening his mouth to answer when a knock sounds on the door. They both frown at it for a moment before Bilbo gets up to answer, reluctantly letting go of Thorin’s hand in the process.
It’s Balin, hands folded in front of himself, his nose twitching in what almost looks like amusement. “We’ve been waiting for two hours, laddie. Don’t you think it’s about time you two brought yourselves out here?”
Bilbo doesn’t scowl but it’s a close thing. He catches sight of Fili and Kili over Balin’s shoulder, both of them hovering, worry marks clear on their brow, and any desire to scowl simply melts out of him.
“Yes, yes, very well,” he says, “just give us one more moment and we’ll be out.”
Balin nods in agreement and wanders off. Bilbo gives Fili and Kili a weak half-smile and then closes the door again, leaning his forehead against the wood and resisting the urge to scream. Sweet Yavanna, how is he meant to handle this?
“It will all be alright, master burglar,” Thorin says from behind him, placing a hand on the back of his neck.
“You can’t know that,” he says, but he doesn’t shake Thorin off. Thinks that if he could, he’d simply let Thorin hold him, solid and grounding, until the remaking of the world. It would be safer.
And it would, after a time, be entirely boring. But he still quietly wishes for it.
“I can’t,” Thorin says agreeably, turning Bilbo around with his other hand and pressing their foreheads together again. “But I will make it so. For you. For Fili. For Kili. For the company. For all of Erebor.”
“So confident,” he murmurs. “I suppose that’s part of your charm.”
Thorin huffs, but there’s a pleased smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Come, we must go face the company and their judgement.”
Bilbo breathes in slowly, breathes out. Curses his traitorous heart and then nods. “Lead the way, Thorin Oakenshield. I’ll follow.”
☀︎
The company are all seated at the table when they emerge and the room goes furiously silent when they enter. Dwalin’s glower could burn Bag End to the ground. Kili gives him a weak grin. Even Bofur looks solemn. Gandalf is furiously smoking his pipe, watching them both from under furrowed eyebrows.
“Well,” Balin says, sighing a bit as he once again becomes the spokesperson for the group. Bilbo would feel bad if he didn’t know that Balin enjoyed it. “I do believe it’s time you both explain what is going on here.”
There’s a beat pause and then one wryly quirked eyebrow from Nori. “You two clearly know each other.”
Bilbo is suddenly painfully aware that he and Thorin are standing arm to arm, pinkies just barely touching. He’d feel gratified that Thorin clearly wants to be next to him just as badly as he wants to be next to Thorin if it weren’t for the abundance of eyes upon them.
“It is as we said earlier,” Thorin says slowly, weighing each word as he puts it down, “we have lived this journey once before. We know how it is meant to end.”
“No,” he says, the word scrambling out of his mouth, “No, we know how it ended before. Which is clearly not how it was meant to end considering we’re having to do it all over again.”
Thorin hesitates, but nods after a moment. “Aye. There is much about the final days of the journey that I would change.”
“This is ridiculous,” Dwalin says with a snort. “Thorin, you cannot expect me to believe this.”
“Do you really think uncle would joke about this,” Fili asks incredulously. “Now of all times.”
Dwalin scowls some more.
“I agree with master Fili,” Dori says solemnly. “I do not believe that Thorin would play a joke of this manner.”
“I don’t believe uncle would play a joke of any manner,” Kili mutters. Bofur barks out a startled laugh and Kili grins when Thorin scowls at him.
“I had thought Bilbo to be quite mad actually,” Gandalf says in response to nobody. “But now Thorin as well. I do not believe a hobbit and a dwarf would share the same madness.”
“Thanks,” Bilbo says dryly. “That really helped.”
“You are not the hobbit that I remember, Bilbo Baggins,” Gandalf says, looking very old for a minute. “But I do believe it is for the better that you have changed. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Bilbo blinks, looks around at the company, and links his pinky around Thorin’s. “Yes actually. I do believe I would. Though I’m not sure I’d have agreed two days ago.”
“Two days ago in this past, or in the future past,” Gandalf asks, looking quite curious.
“Both,” he says with a shrug.
“And you Thorin Oakenshield,” Gandalf says gravely, “are you the same dwarf that you were the first time you stood in Bag End.”
Thorin’s face goes dark and he doesn’t respond for a long minute. He looks at his nephews, looks down and meets Bilbo’s eyes. He looks haunted and his voice when he answers is so very tired. “No,” he says heavily. “And I do not believe that is a bad thing.”
“So then, tell us Thorin, what do we have to expect from this journey?” Glóin asks.
And Thorin tells them. Opens his mouth and lets the whole sorry tale spill out. There are sharply indrawn breathes from everyone at the table, Gandalf included, when Thorin gets to the gold sickness. Outraged glares when he gets to the arkenstone, to Bilbo’s desperate betrayal. But Thorin glares them all down and no one dares to interrupt. He talks and talks and doesn’t falter until he gets to Fili’s death. His hand twists to grasp Bilbo’s, grip tight, and then he continues, tone even as he talks about his beloved nephews deaths. About his own death.
He ends it with a simple, Bilbo was by my side as I died. I do not know what happened in the days that followed. Bilbo thinks that’s a deceptively simple ending for something he’d cried over so hard.
One by one every pair of eyes turns to him, each more assessing than the last. Bifur says something rapid in Khuzdul, gesturing emphatically and Bombur nods. “He says welcome to the company, you’ve clearly earned it if that tale is anything to go by.”
He looks around, finds the rest of the company nodding along. All of the company except for Dwalin. But Bilbo hadn’t expected Dwalin to get on board with this quickly so he’s not offended.
“What happened after my death?” Thorin asks Bilbo, eyebrows drawing together as he looks down at him. “Anything of importance?”
Bilbo hesitates but says slowly, “I’m not sure. I wasn’t… that is to say, I didn’t quite… I don’t remember the first day very well and the second I was helping Oin in the healer tents.”
“Don’t remember the first day,” Kili says, confusion lacing his voice. “Why ever not?”
And there’s no nice way to say, I was so lost in my grief I kept losing time, no good way to explain that he’d barely been able to leave Thorin’s side, too occupied with saying goodbye. That he hadn’t known about Kili’s death until he’d stumbled into the healing tent and found Tauriel bent over his body. That even in death Kili and Fili had been side by side.
There’s just no good way to explain that the grief had been so overwhelming he’d thought he’d drown before he ever saw the shore. And maybe he would have. Maybe he wouldn’t have made it out of Erebor without breaking down even more. Maybe he would have made it back to the shire. He doesn’t know.
Either way he has no answer to Kili’s question that isn’t tragic and too much, too soon, everything still raw and weeping despite Thorin a solid presence at his side.
He settles for a shrug instead and Thorin’s hand tightens around his like he can hear all the things Bilbo still isn’t saying.
“Never mind,” Thorin says, absently waving a hand through the air. “What happened after is far less important than what happens leading up to the battle.”
“You sure you aren’t just going to make a bad ending worse,” Dwalin says, shoulders still one long tense line of irritation.
Thorin glowers at Dwalin. “I’m going to fix this,” Thorin says, not an ounce of compromise in his voice. “I will reclaim Erebor for my people.”
There’s an implicit or die trying at the end of the sentence that makes Bilbo want to snarl. But he holds his peace and thinks of earlier and Thorin promising he would do his best to not die. Believes that Thorin will keep that promise. That has to be enough for now. It has to be.
☀︎
They eat eventually, once Thorin has hashed through the harsher details of the journey again. It’s a late dinner and it takes half of it before the somber mood breaks. But Bilbo does his best to lighten it by telling them about the first time this had happened. His shock and discombobulation. The ridiculous song that they’d made up and the way he’d fainted and soon enough they’re all laughing, Fili and Kili and Bofur and Bombur trying to make up a new song.
And for a little bit Bilbo can pretend that everything is okay. That they’ve made it through the worst and come up singing. But they haven’t made it through the worst, haven’t even started on the journey yet and the food settles in his stomach uncomfortably as he eats.
When he meets Gandalf’s eyes over the table, Gandalf looks deeply solemn and contemplative. What the old wizard is contemplating Bilbo may never know but it still causes the pit in his stomach to open up wider, because what if, what if they do make it worse. What if someone else dies.
Without really thinking about it he finds himself reaching for Thorin’s hand and then stops at the last second, wavering and pulling back. Thorin, despite being in seemingly deep conversation with Balin, grabs his hand before he can fully withdraw though and squeezes his hand softly. Bilbo can’t help but smile just a bit and squeezes back before stealing his hand away. It’s easier to go back to eating after that. To listening to the rest of the company talk about everything as if it’s just some wild story and not something they were all going to have to live through very soon.
Nori catches his eyes while he’s looking around the table and glances meaningfully between him and Thorin with raised eyebrows. Bilbo refuses to blush. Just shrugs in response. He knows it’s not a satisfactory answer and that Nori can’t be the only one wondering but really, he’s still not sure himself, so they’ll just have to be patient as well.
The hand holding, the hugging, the foreheads pressed together — it’s all so new for them that Bilbo scarcely knows what to do with it and certainly hasn’t had time to really process it.
“I’ll show you where you can all sleep,” he says finally when he sees several of the dwarves start yawning, the evening winding down despite how little they’ve really managed to cover. He gets them all set up in the guest rooms, some in beds, some on the floors, and grumbling they all go. All except for Thorin.
Thorin who stands in front of the fire as the rest depart and does not move except to nod at his nephews bidding him goodnight. It’s only in the following quiet that Bilbo allows himself to stand and just watch Thorin. Leaning against the doorway and observing the quiet contemplation that’s settled over Thorin’s body like a blanket. His eyebrows are drawn together as he stares into the fire and Bilbo’s palms burn with the desire to touch. To run his hands over Thorin’s face, through his hair, down his sides. He wants to burn the imprint of a whole and healthy Thorin into his palms so that he has a map splayed across his own hands for how to fix Thorin back up when the bastard inevitably throws himself into danger.
He’d call it a foolish wish but. But he isn’t so sure it is. If someone had asked him two months ago he’d have said it was. If someone had asked him a week ago he’d have snapped that all Thorin Oakenshield knew how to love was gold. If asked two days ago he’d have stopped up his ears because he couldn’t handle the idea of having something so monumental slip between his fingers before it could even begin. But now, in the low light of Bag End, one adventure behind them and another about to begin, now Bilbo has the audacity to feel hopeful.
Thorin shifts, head tilting slightly so that he can meet Bilbo’s regard with his own. Their eyes meet and Bilbo can’t stop his mouth from tugging into a smile. He’d thought this lost. Would have taken anything in those final two days, Thorin screaming at him, Thorin lost to gold sickness, but he had not thought to even wish for something as blessed as this. Thorin’s eyes clear and warm as they watch him, the firelight catching on the silver in Thorin’s hair and making it flicker.
“Are you going to stare into the fire and brood all night?” he asks softly, stepping forward until he’s forced to tip his head back to meet Thorin’s eyes. There’s scant inches between them and Bilbo wonders what it’ll take to get rid of even those.
“You have yet to show me where to lay my head,” Thorin replies quietly, one hand raising to cup Bilbo’s cheek. “I would not be parted from you if possible,” he says, even quieter still, the request settling between them and burning with promise.
Thorin’s eyes are very blue and Bilbo’s mouth is very dry. “I would be pleased to keep you near me, even in sleep,” he responds, taking one last step forward. The tips of his fingers catch against Thorin’s and they curl into each other. Thorin breathes out slowly and leans down to press his forehead against Bilbo’s.
“Good,” he says, the word fierce and soft, a promise that Bilbo grabs at with both hands.
“Good,” he echoes smiling, heart pitter-pattering through his chest in a way that feels like a joyful dance. “Come then, to bed we go.”
☀︎
He thinks that it should be awkward. Thinks that there should be something more difficult about this than there is. The beast of resentment that still lingers in his chest grows quieter and quieter with every peaceful moment that stretches between them. Every time Thorin reaches for him a little more of the beast dissolves into smoke. It still feels like it should be harder than it is. Still feels like something should give.
He doesn’t realize what until they’re both standing in his bedroom, both stripped down to nothing but their small clothes., and he watches Thorin slide into his bed. He joins after a moment of just marveling at the sight, something hard gathering in his throat.
It’s the slide of Thorin’s arms around him, his palms pressed against Thorin’s chest, that finally breaks him.
The sob bubbles up before he can stop it and his mind flashes to Ravenhill and blood on his palms. Flashes to the battlements and the wind in his face. His heart has been broken so many times in the past few days and he doesn’t know if it can handle another.
“There is no need for tears, my burglar,” Thorin whispers, pulling him closer, their legs slotting together, and Thorin’s fingers taking up purchase in his hair. “All is well.”
“You died,” Bilbo says, that same wild grief from earlier rising up in him again and threatening to strangle him. “You died and I forgave you but—” he chokes a little bit and Thorin goes stiff.
“But?” Thorin prods, voice tight.
He sniffs, desperately holding back the tears. “But, I think a little bit of me wants to hate you for what happened on the battlements,” and it’s a shameful thing to say, something he would never have admitted in the light of day. But here, in his bed, in the dark with Thorin’s arms around him, he thinks he can admit this. “And it doesn’t change that I forgive you but I’m still hurt.”
Thorin doesn’t say anything for a long minute, his right hand has settled low on Bilbo’s back, underneath Bilbo’s shirt, and is rubbing soothing circles into skin. “I treated you poorly,” Thorin says finally, “I cannot apologize deeply or often enough for the way that I treated you. Your forgiveness is more than I deserve and I would not blame you if you were to hate me. Or if you were to send me from your bed.”
“I will not be sending you from my bed,” he huffs, tightening his grip on Thorin’s shirt. “I’m not sure I can handle having you out of my sight. I rather still fear that this is all a dream I’ll wake from soon.”
“I am here. I will not go anywhere.” Thorin says, pressing a kiss to his hair.
And Bilbo, daring to have the audacity to want more than he thinks he deserves, tilts his head back and presses his mouth to the underside of Thorin’s chin, the beard coarse against his mouth. Thorin makes a noise deep in his throat and shifts them around until they’re laying in bed, foreheads pressed together, sharing air, two halves of a whole curving into each other.
“I do not deserve this from you,” Thorin says even as he leans in closer, the words kissing Bilbo’s mouth. “I have nothing to offer you.”
“You have yourself don’t you,” he says back, reaching up with a trembling hand burying it in Thorin’s hair. “I need nothing else.”
“Very well,” Thorin says, the words more air than sound, and before Bilbo can say anything else Thorin is pressing forward, slotting their mouths together and pressing Bilbo back into the mattress.
He sighs into the kiss, tightening his grip in Thorin’s hair and greedily swallowing down the groan that he gets in return. In revenge Thorin nips at his bottom lip with sharp teeth, worrying at it until his mouth feels swollen. They kiss and kiss, soft and slow, as Thorin, with single minded determination, dominates every corner of Bilbo’s mouth. His tongue is hot and heavy against Bilbo’s own and the longer they kiss the more swollen his mouth feels. The smooth skin around his mouth rubbed raw from Thorin’s beard rendering the pleasure nearly painful. He can’t help but moan just a little, a thin, high sound that gets caught against the walls.
Thorin lets out a groan at the sound and buries his face against Bilbo’s neck, scraping his teeth against Bilbo’s rabbit fast pulse. When he bites down Bilbo goes completely pliant in his arms, another moan falling out of his mouth.
“I would keep you in this bed forever if you only say the word,” Thorin rasps out, pressing another bruising kiss to his mouth. “I would abandon this foolhardy quest to a later date.”
His breath catches, the offer so monumental he can’t see around the breadth of it. “You know we can’t,” he says regretfully, wishing for nothing more than to have endless days to themselves. Endless days to gorge on pleasure and good food and quiet conversation. But there are battles to be fought and kingdoms to reclaim.
Thorin’s fingers spread wide across his stomach even as he sighs. “Yes, I know. Come then , we must sleep. There is a long journey once again ahead of us.”
Bilbo pulls him down for one more kiss, framing Thorin’s face with his hands as they kiss, and feeling something so impossibly tender blooming to life in his chest. His heart is bruised and aching but overflowing with so much joy that he thinks he could cry from the sheer force of that alone.
“Sleep, amrâlimê,” Thorin whispers against his mouth, pulling Bilbo against him.
Bilbo hums contentedly, already half-drifting, and thinks to himself that no matter what, at least the following months will be filled with just as much as joy as pain. Every moment that he spends with Thorin will never be taken for granted. Even during the bad he’ll make sure to remember that. He will.
☀︎
Originally posted on AO3
