Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sandwiched between a café and an art supplies shop, the tall townhouse conversion offered no visible threat other than the wooden business sign hanging to the right of the entrance, swinging slightly in the breeze, taunting him, fuelling the tendrils of doubt that had firmly taken root when his cousin had first suggested this.

“Please just try it,” Prim had urged, bending to hoist Frodo under his chubby arms up into his high chair. “My friend took the same Beginner’s class last year and apparently the teacher is fantastic.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she is,” Bilbo had shrugged, raising his hands in surrender. “I just don’t think-” he broke off to retrieve the plastic spoon Frodo had flung across the room, passing it back to Prim. “I just don’t think she’ll be able to help me. I don’t think it’s right for me.”

Bilbo really thought it went without saying; yoga very obviously wasn’t for him. Yoga was for interesting people. Luminous people, people who took gap years and spoke a foreign language. People who ate lentils and burned incense and had fantastic, colourful friends with fantastic, colourful lives full of travel and silent retreats and those baggy trousers with elephants on them. Yoga was decidedly not for people like Bilbo, who wore cardigans and ate beans on toast and whose linguistic capabilities stretched only as far as a rusty Spanish A-Level.

“Oh, I think it might be,” Prim had said lightly, smiling as she dabbed fruitlessly at Frodo’s yoghurty face, and Bilbo narrowed his eyes at her.

“What do you mean?”

He never had got to the bottom of Prim’s ominous smirk, and when he’d foolishly mentioned the conversation to Ben the next day, the physician had nodded emphatically.

“Fantastic idea,” his voice echoed now in Bilbo’s mind, as his hip gave a dull throb. “Do it. Definitely do it.”

Huffing out a deep breath, Bilbo hoisted the carry-bag containing Prim’s yoga mat that she’d instead he borrow higher onto his shoulder and pushed open the door, a welcome wall of warm air greeting him as he stepped across the threshold into a quiet, spacious lobby. The walls were whitewashed brick, the floor a dark, polished wood, lined at the edges with pot after pot of lush greenery; tall climbers with leaves as big as dustbin lids; trailing ivies winding their way along shelves. At the far side of the room was a corner desk, its edges home to yet more plants; tiny succulents in terracotta cups, and a tall, white candle, the flame dancing in the breeze from the open door before it slammed slut behind Bilbo.

“Can I help you, darling?”

The girl sitting behind the desk had almost alarmingly red hair, half pulled back into intricate-looking braids and plaits, revealing slightly pointed ears that were adorned with piercings.

“Yes, hi, hello,” he stuttered, self-consciously shifting the yoga mat from his left shoulder to his right. “I’m here for the Beginner’s class?”

 “Up, and then up again,” she smiled, motioning to the wrought iron spiral staircase in the corner of the room.

With a nervous “Thanks” and a slight stumble that he hoped the girl behind the desk didn’t see, Bilbo trod his way up the instructed two flights of spiral steps, his fingers trailing lightly along the balustrade, marvelling, despite himself, at the myriad green ferns that hung in planters of varying heights in the column of space left at the centre of the sweeping staircase. By the top, his hip was aching again, but not unbearably so and the soft hum of voices drifting through the wooden door down the short corridor actually reassured rather than terrified him, drew him in until he was inside the studio and no longer, to his great surprise, having to fight against an instinct to turn tail and walk straight back out again.

The studio itself was a beautiful room. Being on the top floor, the ceiling was high and cavernous, the exposed brickwork climbing up to meet rafters and beams, strips of directional lights in burnished steel hanging down to illuminate the polished redwood floor with a warm amber glow. Tall, arched windows lined the entirety of the far wall, the sky outside still threatening rain, but the air inside was warm and balmy and Bilbo felt immediately calmed. To his right, a cluster of rattan baskets held rolled-up mats in varying shades of greens and turquoises, strange foam blocks and cylinders stacked up just beyond them. A quiet, melodious track was filtering down from small speakers mounted high on the brick walls, the sound mixing with the heady warmth to create an atmosphere so immediately tranquil that it took Bilbo a long moment to realise that he was not alone in the vast room.

A small group were assembling across the studio from the door, chatting quietly as they unrolled mats and shucked off jackets, hanging them on pegs in the corner of the room. Bilbo followed suit, giving the ladies a tentative smile as he passed them.

“Hello,” one of them offered kindly, a young girl with mousy brown hair she was currently trying to wrestle into a ponytail.

“Morning,” Bilbo nodded with another smile, but contributed nothing further as he made his way to the side of the room by the windows, rolling his mat out self-consciously, his stomach twisting a little with apprehension as he fiddled with the hem of the old grey t-shirt he’d plucked hurriedly from his drawers this morning in a panic about his desperate lack of yoga-appropriate attire.

The next ten minutes saw the room gradually fill until two more rows of people had set up behind Bilbo, bringing the class size to fifteen or so, and Bilbo was pleasantly surprised to find that he was by no means the oldest participant. The class seemed to draw in all sorts: an elderly lady with wispy grey hair pulled into two long plaits that hung down over her shoulders; a boy who couldn’t have been a day over eighteen, although the confident warm up stretches he was performing on his mat told Bilbo this was far from his first session. At the back of the room, two middle-aged women gossiped conspiratorially, giggling into their hands as they cast glances in the direction of the door.

Bilbo turned back to his own mat, smoothing out a few rumples in the foam and thinking vaguely that he probably should have set up at the back too. He didn’t much fancy the idea of the two rows of people behind him bearing witness to his inevitable inadequacy over the next hour.

A moment later, Bilbo heard the door being pushed open and a hush fell over the group.

“Sorry, sorry everyone,” a deep voice broke across the soft music from the speakers. “Sorry I’m late.”

A few people in the class tutted good naturedly, the mousy-haired lady Bilbo had said hello to earlier grinning and shaking her head as the instructor made his way to the front of the studio.

He was tall. Very tall. A good foot on Bilbo, at least. And he was a he, which surprised Bilbo more than it probably should have. His dark hair was cut short, a closely-cropped beard framing his handsome features. Very handsome features, Bilbo’s brain offered, and he was suddenly reminded of the enigmatic smirk Prim had worn when they’d discussed the class’s instructor. He was going to have serious words with her.

The teacher shrugged off his padded overcoat, pulling a woollen scarf from around his neck and hanging them both on the peg right next to Bilbo’s as he toed off his shoes and pushed them against the wall. His navy jumper followed, tugged quickly up over his head and revealing a simple grey vest underneath along with an expanse of olive skin, stretched appealingly over what Bilbo could tell, even from a distance, were trained, powerful muscles. Intricate designs spanned the man’s exposed arms in dark ink, a script Bilbo didn’t recognise winding its way around a tanned bicep, delicate circular patterns spanning his shoulders to disappear under the thin fabric of his vest. The cloth draped itself elegantly down a broad chest and a flat stomach, grey joggers hugging his narrow hips, the loose-fitting trousers tapered just above the ankle. Not an elephant print in sight.

Bloody hell.

“Ok,” the man began, unrolling his own mat, horizontal to the group’s vertical and settling on it with crossed legs to look out at the class. “Good morning, everyone.”

A cheery round of “Good mornings” replied, and the instructor cast his eyes across the room, nodding at the evidently familiar faces until his gaze settled on Bilbo.

“Welcome,” he said, with a small smile. “Thanks for joining us.”

The man’s voice was arrestingly deep, his eyes a piercing blue as he focussed intently at Bilbo. Bilbo attempted a smile in return, though whether he pulled it off was anyone’s guess.

“I’m Thorin,” he continued. “I lead this rabble” – the rest of the class jeered affably – “and if you need anything, just let me know.”

Bilbo nodded mutely, which seemed to satisfy Thorin, who gave him another gentle smile and turned back to the group.

“Remember,” the instructor said softly, unfastening a watch that sat on a black leather strap around his right wrist and laying it on the wooden floor at the head of his mat. “We’re not looking for perfection here; you can’t fail, and you can’t succeed. You can only do.”

Despite Thorin’s reassurance – and Bilbo did wonder how much of that was for his benefit alone, since the rest of the class were obviously well versed in what was about to come – the feeling of trepidation curling in Bilbo’s stomach persisted. Out of his depth and in any situation that even verged on unfamiliar, Bilbo had a lifelong tendency to panic, make a fool of himself, and leave at the earliest opportunity. Prim had offered to run him through some basics ahead of his first class but, for reasons Bilbo cannot currently fathom, he’d refused, insisting he’d muddle through on the day. Now, seeing the rest of the class in all their bought-for-purpose yoga gear and the teacher – in all his perfection, Bilbo’s mind supplied unhelpfully – Bilbo was deeply regretting going against his type and throwing himself in at the deep end like this. Surely, he thought worriedly, this could only end in disaster.

“Ok,” murmured Thorin, bringing Bilbo back to himself. “Let’s begin.”

Glancing around, Bilbo watched most of the group settle into easy, cross-legged positions. The older lady with the grey hair, he noticed, stayed seated as she was, her legs stretched out in front of her on her pale blue mat.

“I want us to start with our breathing,” Thorin said in a quiet, clear voice, and Bilbo looked back at him to see his eyes falling shut as he rested his hands loosely on his knees. “In through the nose, and out through the mouth.”

Barely a quarter of an hour went by before Bilbo, guiltily, had to admit to himself that whatever distant, nebulous perception he might’ve held of yoga up until this point in his life had been entirely incorrect and certainly a complete disservice to people who actually did this. Properly, not whatever shadow of an interpretation he was currently performing as he stumbled on his mat, again. His face burned with embarrassment until he glanced to his right and saw that nobody in the rest of the class was paying him any attention, so focussed were they on holding their own poses. He’d always had a vague idea that it involved a lot of sitting on the floor with your eyes closed and maybe a bit of bowing to a soundtrack of Enya and whale noises and the cloying scent of incense. Not only had Thorin skipped on the incense, but Bilbo hadn’t had both feet – let alone anything else – on his mat at the same time since the class started, and he was rapidly being forced to confront his apparent lack of any sort of muscle tone, stamina or strength. It was an alarming and – despite his initial conviction that this wasn’t for him anyway – slightly unexpected epiphany.

Having to watch Thorin for most of the hour was no great hardship, and more than once Bilbo found himself moving into position considerably later than the rest of the group, so focussed was he on watching the way Thorin’s tattooed arms flexed as they held the weight of his body in a plank position, or the way the man’s vest rode up periodically to reveal a flat, tanned stomach with a dark trail of hair disappearing below the waistband of his loose trousers. The rest of the class appeared effortless and fluid as they moved through positions they obviously knew well, their names mystifying to Bilbo, and he resorted instead to watching as Thorin brought himself into each new pose and then copying him, albeit to a lesser extent, his underworked muscles and stiff joints allowing him little of the flexibility Thorin seemed to naturally possess.

The session ended with a ten minute period of rest, the class returning to their mats, palms upturned, eyes closed, and Bilbo could feel his curls sticking to his forehead as his mind and body seemed stunned into stillness, so shocked were they that he’d actually completed a whole hour of exercise. At length, the rest of the group started filtering out of the studio, chatting amongst themselves, a couple of them waving a quiet goodbye to Bilbo as they passed him. He nodded in return, wishing he’d thought to bring a towel with him as he dabbed at his damp brow with the back of his hand, then turned back to his mat and attempted to roll it tightly back into Prim’s bag, wondering how it had fit before. So embroiled was he with battling the mat into submission that he didn’t notice the soft footsteps approaching his side of the room until he became aware of a tall figure towering next to him, and a deep, warm voice that sounded like heaven when it spoke his name.

“It’s Bilbo, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, h-hi, hello,” he stuttered, abandoning the half-rolled mat and standing to find that he was, as he thought, around a foot shorter than Thorin.

He gulped.

“Hi,” Thorin smiled gently. “Thanks for coming along today.”

“Well, I was sort of forced,” Bilbo shrugged without thinking, and immediately regretted it when he saw the faint look of surprise on Thorin’s face. “Not that I didn’t want to be here! I just… I didn’t realise I’d want to be here until I got here. You know?”

He cursed himself, utterly flustered, but it didn’t seem to matter. Thorin’s mouth pulled into another small smile.

“So,” he said softly when the last of the class had waved their goodbyes and let the studio door shut with a quiet thud. “I understand you’ve recently had a hip operation?”

“Ah, yes,” Bilbo nodded, bobbing his head and sliding his hands into the pockets of his jogging bottoms. The form he’d had to fill in online to sign up for the class had required him to list any physical limitations he may have, and he’d dutifully detailed the current state of his left hip, assuming it was for insurance or health and safety purposes. “Motorbike accident.”

He didn’t miss the second flash of surprise; by now, he was used to having to clarify. His beige cardigans and small stature didn’t exactly scream Hells Angels.

“I wasn’t on the motorbike,” he smiled, and the look of slight confusion on Thorin’s face faded to an almost imperceptible crease of concern between his eyebrows. “I was on the pavement. And the motorbike hit me.”

“My god,” Thorin murmured, his frown deepening.

Bilbo waved away his concern with practised ease.

“Oh, I was actually quite lucky,” he reasoned. “Most of it was superficial. It was just my hip, really; I sort of landed on a bollard.”

In truth, Bilbo remembered very little of the accident. One moment he’d been coming out of Sainsburys, a pint of milk in his hand, and the next he’d been flat on the ground, milk everywhere, pinned between something very hard and something very noisy. The bike had, he’d later been told, swerved to avoid another pedestrian who was crossing the road, hit the kerb, then knocked him down and pushed him forcibly into a concrete post which his left hip had hit with a sickening crunch. The abrasions on his back had healed fairly quickly, the hairline fracture in his wrist proving no more than a minor annoyance after a few weeks, but his hip had been damaged badly enough to warrant three separate surgeries and a stay in hospital that had ended up lasting most of the summer holidays, Prim and Drogo taking it in turns to chaperone a babbling Frodo as a distraction during visiting hours lest Bilbo die from boredom.  An intensive programme of physio after his last surgery had got him back on his feet, and he’d finally been discharged from care altogether by the end of August, his fortnightly appointments to refill his painkiller prescription notwithstanding.

“How does it feel now?” asked Thorin, bringing Bilbo back to the present.

“Fine,” Bilbo nodded. “Yeah, fine. I thought it might hurt more than usual, but it’s fine.”

Thorin smiled grimly.

“Wait until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Second day’s always the worst,” Thorin nodded, his expression almost apologetic. “Especially after your first session.”

Bilbo winced.

“Was it that obvious that I’m brand new to this?”

“We’ve all got to start somewhere,” Thorin smiled, picking his knitted jumper up from the side of the room and tugging it over his head. “But if you found it beneficial, I hope you’ll think about coming back?”

He looked over at Bilbo expectantly.

“Oh, yes,” Bilbo nodded emphatically. “Yes, very beneficial. I’ll erm, be back. Definitely.”

Thorin’s answering smile was magic.

Chapter Text

True to Thorin’s prediction, Bilbo’s hip ached something chronic the next day – which both Prim and Ben assured him was absolutely to be expected – and by Wednesday morning it was so stiff he had trouble moving around without relying on the single aluminium cane that had replaced his twin crutches when he’d been discharged from the hospital. Still, he reasoned, he only needed the cane when walking, and class wouldn’t involve walking any further than the end of his mat, so he should be absolutely fine. And he didn’t particularly want to study the reasons why he was suddenly so keen to go along to yoga practice despite his initial vehement refusal; he was making Prim happy, and making his doctor happy, and, in the long run, making his newly-repaired hip happy. So it was all fine.

Arriving at the studio, he gave the spiral staircase a wary glance and apparently paused just long enough for the redhead behind the desk to notice.

“We have a lift, in the back,” she offered kindly, and Bilbo was happy to forego his pride if it meant not having to drag himself up two flights of twisted metal. He followed the girl – Evie, she introduced herself with a grin – down the short hallway at the back of the lobby and watched as she wrenched open the metal gate on what looked like an old goods lift.

“It’s a bit stiff,” she said, pulling the concertina grating aside for Bilbo to step in. “But just sort of… shove it.”

She waved him off with another smile and Bilbo tugged the sliding door back along its tracks, the lift lurching upwards until it arrived at the second floor with a groan and Bilbo stepped out directly into the studio, at the opposite end of the vast room now to where he’d entered two days previous. Getting his bearings, he propped his cane against the wall next to his hanging coat, his limp worryingly apparent when he made his way across the room to take up the same spot he’d occupied yesterday. He rolled out his mat, carefully lowering himself down to the ground, and winced audibly when he attempted to cross his legs in front of him.

Bugger.

Giving it up as a bad job, he left his left leg straight out in front of him and pulled his right into a folded position, a half-attempt at sitting cross-legged, rubbing firmly at the ache where his hip met his thigh.

“You ok?”

Bilbo turned his head at the question to find his neighbour – a young brunette with a nose ring and a bright pink mat – looking at him in concern.

“Yeah, fine,” he nodded confidently, ceasing his ministrations to his upper leg. “Fine.”

The girl smiled.

“If anything hurts, just stop,” she said kindly, tightening her ponytail. “It’s not supposed to hurt.”

The door at the back of the studio swung open before Bilbo had a chance to reply, so he offered the girl a grateful smile instead, turning back to the front of the room where Thorin was stripping off another knitted jumper to reveal another sleeveless vest, and when he reached his tattooed arms high over his head to warm up, his eyes closing as he stretched, it was all Bilbo could do not to drool on Prim’s poor mat.

Ten minutes into the class, it became clear to Bilbo that he had, quite possibly, fucked up. Every position put an increasingly unbearable strain on his stiff hip, forcing him to leave his left leg awkwardly sticking out in front of him during floor work and avoid using it altogether when they came to a standing pose. He breathed measuredly through his nose, trying to focus on what Thorin was asking of them, but by the time they returned to seated, Bilbo could feel a fine sweat on his brow that had little to do with exertion and everything to do with the dull throb that was radiating down his left side and sending threatening waves of nausea to his stomach.

“Breathe in, and hold.”

Bilbo closed his eyes, letting Thorin’s deep voice ground him, and he pulled in another careful breath which he managed to hold for almost as long as he was supposed to. Letting it out slowly through his open mouth, he waited four beats before pulling it back in through his nose, holding it, and trying not to visibly wince when he shifted slightly on his bottom and sent another shooting pain down his left thigh.

“And just continue like that, in, and out.”

He opened his eyes to see Thorin rising easily from his cross-legged position and stepping away from his mat, the rest of the group carrying on with their breathing exercise as instructed, and watched him stride off across the studio. Bilbo pointedly didn’t watch the way the fabric of Thorin’s loose trousers pulled across his sculpted behind as he moved, as nice a distraction as it was.

Pausing by the pile of foam blocks stacked near the door, Thorin picked one up before turning and weaving his way back across the room between the other mats and their occupants, coming to a halt – heart-stoppingly – next to Bilbo.

“Use this,” he murmured softly as knelt beside Bilbo’s mat, the strange rectangular brick in his hand.

Bilbo blinked at in confusion.

 “Anytime we’re sitting, or kneeling – one of these under your bum. It’ll take some of the strain off your joints.”

“Oh,” Bilbo whispered, eyeing the brick uncertainly, noting with relief that nobody else in the class seemed to be paying the slightest bit of attention to their exchange.

“Let me show you,” Thorin said quietly. “Lift up.”

Bilbo did as he was asked, tipping forward and awkwardly rising up a few inches as he used his hands as leverage, and he felt Thorin push the block quickly between his behind and the mat. When he settled back down, Bilbo immediately understood what Thorin meant. The block was firmer than he was expecting, offering virtually no give despite its squishy appearance, but immediately Bilbo felt the ache in his left hip lessen. The pulling in his knees, too, was gone. The position was altogether considerably more comfortable, and he said as much when he looked up at Thorin’s expectant expression.

“Yeah, better,” Bilbo whispered, nodding gratefully. “Much better.”

The second half of the class was noticeably easier than the first, Thorin’s modification with the block allowing Bilbo to sit and kneel without feeling as if his leg were on fire. The standing poses were still a challenge though, and towards the end of the hour he found himself rubbing gingerly at the joint again after an ill-planned turn forced him to put more weight on it than he probably should have. By the time Thorin guided them all into Savasana, Bilbo was glad to be horizontal. He took a deep inhale, letting his eyes fall closed, and tuned back into Thorin.

“Stay connected to your breath,” the teacher said softly, just audible over the gentle music floating down from the speakers. “You can put one hand on your heart, if it helps. The other on your stomach.”

Thorin’s deep voice was a tonic to Bilbo, washing over him and dragging him down as he matched him, breath for breath. His limbs felt heavy, his head pleasantly clear, and he soon lost track of time as he allowed himself to fall deeper. He was peripherally aware of being told to breathe in, being told to breathe out, but the warmth and the soft music were pulling him further and further away from the studio, and he was more than happy to go as he was lulled into a deep, freeing rest.

“And when you’re ready,” Thorin murmured, after what could have been hours but at the same time felt far too soon, “just gently bring yourself back to a seated position on your mat and allow your eyes to open.”

Slowly returning to himself, Bilbo let out one last, long breath then blinked his eyes open. He didn’t think he’d ever felt more relaxed; every molecule in his body felt pulled pleasantly downwards into his mat, grounding him, his limbs heavy and drowsy. Even the pain in his hip had gone. Until it suddenly hadn’t, thirty seconds later when he opened his eyes fully and attempted to push himself back into a seated position. He didn’t even get halfway up before a burst of pain seared through his left leg, taking his breath away and blurring his vision long enough for Thorin to say his closing words and for the studio to clear around him. He let himself flop back onto his mat, eyes closed against the dizziness threatening to overwhelm him and he couldn’t honestly gauge how much time had passed before he sensed a tall presence at the right-hand side of his mat.

“Bilbo?” came Thorin’s soft voice, the quiet rustle of fabric as he settled carefully on the wooden floor next to Bilbo.

Bilbo shook his head, breathing out another long, controlled breath.

“Hip,” he whispered, his voice more fragile than he would have liked. “You lied.”

“I lied?” Thorin replied.

“Third day is the worst.”

Thorin huffed out a soft laugh, his mouth pulling into a gentle smile as Bilbo cracked his eyes open.

“Ok,” he murmured, kneeling up to reach over Bilbo, gesturing to his aching hip. “Can I…?”

Bilbo blinked up at him in confusion.

“I trained as a physio,” Thorin explained, his tone reassuring. “Before I discovered yoga. I can help.”

He gestured again to Bilbo’s hip, and somewhere between needing the burning pain to go away and curiosity about what those broad, tanned hands would feel like on his body, Bilbo found himself nodding.

Thorin nodded in return, his smile fading to a look of concentration as he gently lay one hand above and one hand below Bilbo’s left hip – regrettably through the fabric of his jogging bottoms and cotton t-shirt.

“Whereabouts was the break?”

“Erm, it was subcapital,” Bilbo tried, suspecting Thorin might know more about this than even he did if he was a trained physiotherapist. Thorin nodded, adjusting his hands slightly.

“How many pins have you got?”

Bilbo tried very hard not to think about the way Thorin’s left thumb was beginning to press gently into Bilbo’s joint with experimental pressure.

“Uh, two,” Bilbo said softly, focusing on a spot high above on the vaulted ceiling and steadfastly avoiding Thorin’s measuring gaze.

“Ok,” Thorin muttered again. “Please let me know if this hurts too much.”

Bilbo barely had time to register what Thorin had said before the most incredible feeling of relief surged from a thumb-sized point just above his hip joint to flood his entire body, forcing an audible moan from Bilbo’s lips.

“Oh my god.”

His eyes fell shut, his breath leaving him in one cleansing wave and he knew he should probably be mortified but god, it was so hard to care when Thorin’s hands were doing such magical things to him. Warm fingers massaged his aching muscles, that thumb pressing again into the joint, with more pressure this time, and when Bilbo’s eyes flickered back open it was to the rippling muscles of Thorin’s left bicep leaning tantalisingly close to Bilbo’s face as he pushed down again on his hip, forcing another low groan from the smaller man.

“Ok?” Thorin asked softly, moving one hand to carefully slip it under Bilbo’s left knee, slowly coaxing him to bend his leg until his foot was flat against the mat.

“Mmm,” Bilbo hummed, not trusting his voice. Gradually, he felt his taut muscles begin to loosen, the ache soothed by the warmth of Thorin’s hands. He let his eyes fall closed again, his breath coming more freely the more Thorin worked him and the more the pain slipped away.

“Ok,” Thorin’s deep voice drifted through his reverie. “Can you turn over?”

Bilbo’s eyes cracked open as he straightened his leg back out and clumsily began to roll himself, Thorin’s hand on his thigh a guiding force. He gingerly turned, resting his forehead on his folded arms in front of him.

“Still ok?”

There was, to Thorin’s credit and to Bilbo’s guilty disappointment, no hint of anything more behind his gentle professionalism, his hands returning to Bilbo’s hip as he began to work the muscle beneath his trousers. He massaged gently but efficiently, his pressure increasing as he worked the flesh at the base of Bilbo’s back, just below where the hem of his jogging bottoms sat, and after a moment Bilbo had to take a few precautionary deep breaths through his nose and do a mental run-through of his shopping list for the supermarket, lest Thorin’s attentions unwittingly lead his body down an entirely inappropriate path.

“There,” Thorin murmured at length, carefully tugging Bilbo’s t-shirt back into place from where it had ridden up slightly. “Just take a minute. I’ll get your things together for you.”

The proffered minute was, embarrassingly, much needed. Bilbo had to do two more silent recitals of his groceries before he felt confident enough to turn himself back over, and when he finally pushed himself up into a seated position, noting – to his relief and amazement – virtually no pain, it was to find Thorin padding back across the studio with Bilbo’s coat in one hand and aluminium cane in the other. Setting them down next to Bilbo’s mat, he offered him a hand, carefully pulling him up to standing and keeping a hold of him once there whilst Bilbo tested his weight on his left leg.

“Ok?” Thorin asked quietly, his hand still gently supportive.

Bilbo nodded, smiling in thanks when Thorin leant down to retrieve the cane and pass it to him along with his jacket.

“Yeah,” Bilbo nodded again. “Better.”

He looked up to meet Thorin’s gentle gaze.

“Thank you.”

Thorin gave him a small smile.

“You’re welcome. It’s what I’m here for.”

“Well,” Bilbo chuckled and raised his eyebrows, hooking his cane in the crook of his left arm as he pulled the sleeve of his coat over his right. “Not really.”

“I’m here to help you,” shrugged Thorin as he stooped to roll Bilbo’s mat away and slide it into its carry-bag. “If that means a quick sports massage at the end of the session, that’s fine.”

More professionalism. Kind and gentle, no doubt, but when Bilbo adjusted his cane and looked up to meet Thorin’s gaze, there was no detectable hint anywhere of any intention of innuendo. And, Bilbo chided himself, that was exactly how things should be.

“Maybe I came back too soon,” he muttered, breaking the moment.

“Maybe,” Thorin acquiesced. “But at least you know now. Slow and steady.”

“Slow and steady,” Bilbo nodded.

“Keep using the blocks during class,” Thorin suggested, passing the rolled-up mat to Bilbo. “And how about just twice a week for now? Mondays and Fridays?”

“Yeah,” Bilbo nodded. “That’s probably a better idea.”

It was hard to keep the absurd note of disappointment out of his voice.

“… and if you do want to come in on Wednesdays as well, come for the end of the class and then we can just spend half an hour doing some really simple stretches. It’ll do you good.”

Bilbo’s face brightened.

“You have time for that?”

“Absolutely,” Thorin nodded. “I’ll be here.”

Chapter Text

“You fancy him!” Prim cooed over her cup of tea, her elbows propped on the counter across the island from Bilbo.

“Obviously I fancy him,” spluttered Bilbo, widening his eyes at his cousin. “You knew I would fancy him!”

It had only taken a month for Bilbo to admit to himself that his feelings towards Thorin went a little further than simply finding the man physically attractive, and a few days more to summarily bury that realisation in a locked box marked “Best Left Unexplored”. Thorin was calm, and warm and enigmatic. Completely devoted to his craft, he seemed to radiate tranquillity, quietening Bilbo’s mind even on his most harried of mornings with his deep voice and constant, captivating stillness. In short, he was everything that Bilbo wasn’t, and Bilbo found himself drawn to Thorin like a moth to a flame.

“Of course I knew,” Prim shrugged, straightening up. “He’s gay, by the way.”

Bilbo paused, his teacup halfway to his mouth.

“… really?”

“Oh, now he wants to talk about it!”

“Prim,” Bilbo warned.

“Fine, fine,” she waved her hand in defeat, depositing her empty cup in the sink and turning back to face Bilbo, her arms folded across her chest. “Yes, he likes blokes. Someone I know went on a retreat with him a couple of years ago so she knows him quite well. He’s a nice guy, apparently.”

“He is a nice guy,” Bilbo agreed quietly, swirling the dregs of his own cup of tea around the bottom of his mug.

Prim smiled softly.

“Well…” she encouraged, raising one eyebrow at Bilbo.

“Well, what?”

“Well, why don’t you ask him out? Go for a coffee or something.”

Bilbo frowned.

“Because it’s inappropriate.”

“He’s your yoga instructor, Bilbo,” Prim said, rolling her eyes. “Not your headmaster.”

Laughing humourlessly, Bilbo slid off his stool and crossed to the sink, nudging Prim aside as he flicked on the hot tap to wash out both their empty mugs.

“It really doesn’t matter anyway,” he said lightly, squirting a measure of Fairy Liquid into the warm water. “He is fantastically out of my league.”

Prim tutted, plucking a tea towel from where it was hanging on the oven door and wiping dry the clean mugs as Bilbo placed them on the draining board.

“Behave,” she teased, elbowing Bilbo gently. “You’re handsome men, you Bagginses. Why do you think I married your cousin?”

-

The last days of October brought more bitingly-cold, wild weather, and Bilbo found himself craving the balmy warmth of the studio whenever he wasn’t there. He attended his usual class every Monday and Friday without fail, in between Frodo-sitting, running errands for Prim, and optimistically beginning work on lesson plans for his return to work after Easter, and his one-on-one practices with Thorin on Wednesdays had organically grown from thirty minutes of gentle stretches to hour-long sessions of movement, physio, and – to Bilbo’s delight – generally getting to know one another. Thorin, he learnt, lived in a loft conversion not two minutes down the road, with a resident cat who had shown up three winters ago and glued himself to Thorin’s side, refusing to leave. “I think he adopted me,” Thorin had chuckled, and Bilbo had tried not to melt into the mat at the soppy look on Thorin’s face.

He learnt that Thorin was thirty-six years old, and was a vegetarian, but – to Bilbo’s internal amusement – hated lentils and was allergic to soy. He learnt that he had lived in London his whole life, but had spent time in India, and later Bali, the latter being where most of his intricate tattoos originated from. He had some siblings, and two nephews, but beyond that was very private about his family life, and during a break in a Wednesday session on a blustery late November morning, Bilbo found out why.

“How did you get into… all this?” Bilbo waved his hand vaguely around the studio, blowing gently on the cup of tea Thorin had just handed him. Green tea, which had become something of a ritual during their Wednesday meetings, and Bilbo tended to prefer a good old-fashioned cup of English Breakfast himself but there was something about the fact that it was made for him by Thorin, to drink with Thorin, that made the bitter taste utterly bearable. Pleasant, even.

Thorin paused for a moment, seeming to deliberate his next words carefully.

“My parents died when I was eighteen, and I didn’t handle it well.”

Bilbo’s chest tightened, a familiar ice gripping his insides as he absorbed what Thorin has just said.

“I had younger siblings,” Thorin continued, his gaze slipping past Bilbo to the tall windows at the other side of the studio. “And I had to look after them. Which I did,” he said softly, taking a sip of his tea and then shaking his head, smiling grimly. “But I didn’t look after myself.”

“I’d dropped out of school when I was sixteen,” he went on, running a hand distractedly up the side of his face, scratching lightly at his beard. “Then started my apprenticeship as a physio, which was what I wanted to do. Did that for two years, and the day after I qualified…”

He trailed off, looking up at Bilbo and shrugging a little with a small, sad smile.

“By the time I was twenty, I was…” he shook his head, looking back down at his tea. “Not good. On my worst days I couldn’t even leave the house. And it started to become a problem. My sister – she was only sixteen by then – she started to take control a bit, try to look after the three of us. That didn’t seem right.”

He shook his head again, taking a deep breath which appeared to calm him.

“It was probably the only spontaneous decision I’d made in my life up until that day,” he continued, his voice a little stronger now. “I was walking home from the supermarket one lunchtime, and I’m in a…” he hesitates, frowning into his teacup. “A bad way, at this point. And I pass by this yoga studio. Tiny little place, nothing fancy. And the door was open, and it opened straight into the studio, and there was someone sitting inside on a mat.”

“And this girl just smiles at me,” Thorin said, a smile pulling at his own lips. “Just smiles. And she looks so… happy. And so calm, and just… everything I wasn’t. And I just walked inside.”

“And the rest is history?” Bilbo offered quietly, returning Thorin’s smile.

Thorin nodded.

“It completely turned my life around,” he said softly. “I sorted myself out, got things back on track, and then retrained as an instructor. And here we are.”

“Here we are,” Bilbo echoed, raising his cup of tea to Thorin in a mock toast.

“Anyway,” Thorin said, clinking his mug against Bilbo’s and taking a sip of his tea. “I’ll get off my soapbox now.”

They drank in silence, Bilbo staring contemplatively into his tea, thinking. It was a long moment before either of them spoke again, and when Bilbo took a steadying breath and mumbled into his teacup, his voice was barely above a whisper.

“My parents died too.”

Thorin’s gaze snapped up to Bilbo, his teacup halfway to his mouth.

“Car accident,” Bilbo nodded, his eyes fixed on the mat in front of him. “When I was seventeen.”

There was a moment of silence, the weight of both their admissions hanging between them in the empty studio. It was Thorin who finally broke it.

“Bilbo…”

His voice was so kind, so obviously understanding that Bilbo had to blink several times before he dared raise his eyes to meet Thorin’s.

“I was lucky though,” he smiled, taking a deep, composing breath and a small sip of his tea. “We had an old family friend. Mad old coot, absolutely barmy. But he took me in, and he sorted me out.”

He nodded, a fond expression on his face as he recalled those first weeks at Gandalf’s, stumbling around his vast townhouse, rooms full of bizarre curios from the old man’s travels, antique furniture and stacks upon stacks of books in languages Bilbo didn’t even recognise. He’d been allowed exactly two months of self-indulgent moping, punctuated by dark nights where he’d wake up sobbing and Gandalf would be there with a cup of cocoa in his hand and a long, meandering story about a time from his own past in some far-off country, until Bilbo drifted back to sleep. By the end of the summer, Gandalf had enrolled him on a teacher training course at the same private institution where he himself had once taught, and he’d been the one to give Bilbo the push out of the door he’d needed once he’d passed his exams and was ready to face the world by himself again.

It was a long moment before Bilbo realised that Thorin was still watching him, a softness in his eyes that made Bilbo’s heart ache for reasons not entirely attributable to the stories they’d just shared.

They finished their tea in a calm, meditative silence, something small and indistinct having shifted between them, and as they both gazed out of the tall, arched windows across the studio, the gale outside finally died down and for the first time that winter, snow began to fall.

-

In December, Thorin pulled Bilbo aside after class one Monday and told him about a teaching assessment he was taking in two weeks’ time – a secondary qualification in practices for leg injuries – and asked Bilbo if he would have time to come along and be his student for the day.

“Only if you’ve got time,” Thorin assured him, flicking through the print-outs in front of them to show Bilbo the types of exercises they’d be working through during the assessment. “And I’ll buy you lunch to say thank you.”

Bilbo was powerless to resist the hopeful smile that accompanied the offer, and he spent the next fortnight arguing with Prim over whether or not the lunch constituted a date, which it definitely didn’t.

“I’m doing him a favour,” Bilbo insisted, chuckling as he watched Frodo happily destroy the tower of bricks Bilbo had just spent five minutes assembling. “He’s only being nice.”

“Hmm, yes,” drifted Prim’s voice from the kitchen. “Sounds like he’s very nice to you.”

Bilbo rolled his eyes.

In truth, by the time Christmas came around Bilbo had to admit it was becoming harder and harder to focus in class, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was getting as much as he could be getting out of his practice. If he wasn’t staring at Thorin with his annoyingly bulging muscles and his annoyingly perfect arse (and consequently wobbling and stumbling around on his mat because he wasn’t concentrating nearly as much as he should’ve been), he had his eyes closed and was being taken apart, piece by piece, by Thorin’s deep voice, and whilst a couple of months ago that voice may have lulled him into a deep state of relaxation, now it was all Bilbo could do not to spend the entire class imagining what that voice would sound like saying other thing. Doing other things.

He stayed with Prim, Drogo and Frodo for Christmas Day, and spent Boxing Day – a Friday – feeling both disappointed and relieved that the studio was closed for the holidays and therefore he didn’t have to waste another whole day being distracted by his ridiculous yoga instructor and being completely incapable of thinking about anything else. And then the first class of the New Year came around, on a bitterly-cold, snowy Monday, and Bilbo pushed open the studio door to find it empty save for Thorin, dressed only in a pair of loose-fitting grey trousers, in the middle of the room.

Bilbo froze.

Thorin’s elbows were bent at ninety degrees to his body, his palms flat against his mat as his arms seemed to take his entire weight, his torso and legs stretched out behind him, holding themselves perfectly perpendicular to the ground. His head was slightly bowed, a hint of strain visible in his neck, the fine sheen of sweat misting the tanned skin making Bilbo wonder exactly how long he’d been in this position. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and deep, and he appeared not to have noticed that anyone else had entered the room.

“Erm,” Bilbo hedged, hovering awkwardly in the gulf between Thorin and the door.

On hearing Bilbo’s voice, Thorin opened his eyes, lowering first his feet, then his legs, then his hips, his arms bending to bring his bare chest to the mat as he turned his head and gave Bilbo a soft smile.

“Bilbo.”

“Sorry, am I early?”

“A bit,” Thorin shrugged as he slowly pushed himself up to standing, running a hand through his slightly damp hair. “Some of the others needed a bit longer to get here because of the snow. Did you not get the email?”

“No?” Bilbo shook his head, knowing full well he hadn’t checked his emails since before Christmas Day. “Sorry…”

Thorin smiled again.

“It’s no problem. How was your Christmas?”

Bilbo felt the now-familiar feeling of relief-disappointment wash over him when Thorin pulled a black vest on over his still-gleaming torso; at the very least, it did offer Bilbo the wherewithal to answer Thorin’s question. Toeing his shoes off by the coat pegs in the corner of the studio, Bilbo filled Thorin in on Frodo’s antics over the holiday period, Thorin actually throwing his head back and laughing uncharacteristically loudly when Bilbo described how the Brussels sprouts from Prim’s Christmas dinner had been catapulted across the dining room to land, against the odds, in the goldfish bowl.

“How was yours?” Bilbo asked, unrolling his mat in his usual spot by the window.

“Chaotic,” Thorin chuckled, tapping something into his phone until the familiar gentle music started filtering down from the speakers above. “My nephews…”

He shook his head fondly, but before Bilbo could ask, the door swung open and the other members of the class started drifting in from outside, laughing as they brushed the snow from their hair. Bilbo bristled at the interruption. Even if it was time for their practice to begin, he found himself irrationally irritated that the rest of the group had put a stop to their conversation before Bilbo was ready for it to end. Sensing his annoyance, Thorin smiled down at him and gave Bilbo’s upper arm a light squeeze before heading up to the front of the class leaving Bilbo to note, distantly, that it was the first time Thorin had ever touched him in something other than an instructive or healing capacity.

The rest of January passed in a blur of snow, practice, and Wednesday morning cups of green tea. Whilst the relentless freezing temperatures seemed to be a constant topic of complaint for everyone around him, a small, selfish part of Bilbo rather hoped they’d hold out for just a little longer, since the cold brought about an ache in his hip that Thorin insisted be massaged away after every session.

He had, however, been able to do away with his cane altogether. He’d admitted to himself – and Ben had confirmed, regretfully – that he would probably always walk with a very slight limp in his left leg, but the strength he’d gained over the past four months and the flexibility Thorin’s classes had lent him left it entirely manageable, barely noticeable unless pointed out, and he even braved the spiral steps before almost every class now, foregoing Evie’s suggestion of the goods lift each time she offered. A favourite exercise of Thorin’s to test the progress in Bilbo’s hip was one they seemed now to repeat as a ritual of sorts at the end of every Wednesday session; lying with their backs flat on their respective mats, but moved right to the edge of the studio, hips seated firmly against the bottom of the wall and legs resting vertically upwards. The position did push more at Bilbo’s joints than its normal seated equivalent did, but Bilbo found that his favourite thing about the pose wasn’t the physical advantage it offered but rather the ten minutes of stillness between the two of them, and occasionally, the opportunity to turn his head to one side and study the sharp profile of Thorin’s face when the other man’s eyes fell closed.

“How are you finding yoga so far?” Thorin had mumbled one morning in such a position, and Bilbo smiled without opening his eyes.

“Good,” he said softly, his breathing slow and deep. “I gave my cane back.”

“That’s good.”

They fell back into silence for a moment, each concentrating on their own breathing,

“Other things seem better too,” Bilbo said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Things are a bit quieter. A bit easier.”

It was an unexpected but undeniable change; coming to class wasn’t scary anymore, and the only butterflies he got now were when Thorin smiled at him. The prospect of returning to work wasn’t as daunting and exhausting as it had seemed at the end of the summer, and the strength slowly building in his muscles was encouragement, a plea from his body to keep going, keep recovering.

Thorin didn’t reply, and after a moment Bilbo turned his head to see a tiny smile on his face.

Mid-February saw the mercury finally begin to rise, and on one particularly mild Saturday afternoon Bilbo found himself meandering along the high street near his flat, knowing he should be upstairs working but finding himself drawn to the sportswear store a few streets over. He’d stubbornly spent the past five months wearing the same few variations of old t-shirt and jogging bottoms to every practice, but with his return to work just around the corner (and return of a full pay packet, meaning he could stop relying on Prim and Drogo for anything that stretched beyond his measly statutory sick pay), he reasoned he could now treat himself to some proper gear. Prim had delighted at the idea of him finally committing to his new hobby, offering to buy him an incense burner as a late Christmas present, which Bilbo had politely declined and insisted he didn’t need her to come with him on his shopping trip.

Forty-five minutes later, Bilbo emerged from the sports shop, a modest bag of vests and trousers in his right hand. He’d turned down some of the more eccentric designs the sales assistant had suggested, but was feeling quietly confident about his selection and was only hoping he could make the outfit work and wouldn’t end up looking a tit in front of Thorin and the rest of the class. Mostly Thorin.

Since their conversation just before Christmas and the revelation that the two of them had much more in common that they’d initially realised, Bilbo and Thorin’s relationship had, over massages and mugs of tea and the occasional lunchtime takeaway from the vegan café next door, grown into something that Bilbo could happily call a friendship. Time spent with Thorin passed easily, comfortingly, and – friends being something of which Bilbo had been in rather short supply since he stopped working the summer before – he found himself relishing every moment of it. The concept of passing the time with somebody who seemed to genuinely want to know more about him, and who wasn’t either of his cousins, was such a novelty to Bilbo that he didn’t realise quite how much he’d come to treasure their sessions together until Prim had suggested, for a second time, that Bilbo ask him out for a drink. Bilbo had promptly shaken his head, not solely on the grounds that it was inappropriate as before but also because he didn’t want to risk damaging what Thorin and he had cultivated between them, and damage it he surely would were he to do something as ridiculous and inevitably pointless as asking his friend on a date.

Still, he was often forced to question his own resolve whenever he caught Thorin stripping off his vest after a practice, or placing a guiding hand on Bilbo’s thigh to correct his pose and inadvertently leading him off into a pleasant fiction of something growing between them that was more than their friendship. Just because it would never happen, didn’t mean Bilbo didn’t ever guiltily think about what it might be like if it did.

He found himself caught up in one such fantasy as he stood at the bus stop, waiting for the number 42 to take him across town to Prim’s for an afternoon of babysitting Frodo. Preoccupied as he was, it took him several moments to realise what, or rather who he was looking at as he gazed unseeingly through the window of a restaurant across the street. He was sitting with his back to the glass, but the tattoos winding down a tanned bicep from underneath the sleeve of a dark t-shirt were unmistakable, and Bilbo felt his stomach twist pleasantly as he watched Thorin put down a few notes then stand, pulling a jacket on and stepping away from the table.

A moment later he emerged from the restaurant into the pale afternoon sunlight, glancing back as he held the door open for someone, and it was only then that Bilbo realised his friend wasn’t alone.

The other man was Thorin’s opposite in every way, other than the fact that he, too, was devastatingly handsome. A few inches shorter than Thorin, his skin was noticeably paler, his blond hair flopping rakishly over one eye until he pushed it back with his hand and used his other to reach up and tickle the back of Thorin’s neck, who gave him a playful shove as they started walking. He wore a black leather jacket, jeans ripped artfully at the knees; the whole look was decidedly cavalier next to Thorin’s understated, calm presence, and they complemented each other beautifully.

Bilbo watched as they strolled off down the street, away from his bus stop. The blond man threw an arm around Thorin’s shoulders, leaning close to whisper something that made Thorin laugh and shake his head, and then the pair of them disappeared around the corner, out of sight.

It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under him. Heart pounding, Bilbo stared blankly at the spot where the two men had just been, feeling cold all over. He didn’t even notice when his bus pulled up in front of him a moment later, and had to mumble a vague apology to the driver as he stumbled on and waved his travel card at the machine before drifting to a seat by the window.

Of course he’s with someone, he thought to himself, chewing distractedly on his bottom lip as he looked unseeingly out at the street rushing past him. Thorin had never mentioned a partner, but then he was so private about his family life, Bilbo had never thought to question it. But of course he’d be with someone. Thorin was beautiful, and interesting, and kind, and it had been stupid to assume nobody else had seen that.

Bilbo hunched forward in his seat, burying his face in his hands and taking deep, calming breaths. In for five, out for five, and then he remembered exactly who had taught him to do this and his breath caught on the fourth inhale, tears pooling mortifyingly in the corners of his eyes and a lump in his throat making it annoyingly hard to swallow.

“Are you alright, dear?”

Bilbo turned his head, seeing the old lady sitting across the aisle from him peering at him in concern.

He sniffed, drawing himself back upright in his seat and wiping quickly at his eyes, offering her a small smile.

“Yes,” he said quietly, not quite trusting his voice not to break. “Yes, thank you. I’m just being silly.”

The woman seemed placated, and gave him a reassuring smile in return before going back to her knitting, and Bilbo turned back to the window, not even having the wherewithal to feel rightfully appalled at himself for being quite so melodramatic as one more traitorous tear slid down his damp cheek.

Stupid.

Chapter Text

“He’s got a boyfriend.”

Prim whipped around, flecks of cake batter flying off the spatula she was holding and landing with a splat on the counter top.

“What?”

“He has a boyfriend,” Bilbo repeated lightly, not meeting Prim’s gaze. “I saw him in town yesterday. With his boyfriend.”

“Oh, Bilbo…” Prim looked at him sadly, shaking her head. “That’s… I’m sorry.”

Bilbo shrugged.

“Not that it really makes a difference,” he muttered, his tone turning bitter. He kept his voice low, remembering Frodo napping in the next room. “I literally never stood a chance with him anyway.”

“Bilbo,” Prim admonished, her brow creasing in concern.

“Come on, Prim,” Bilbo chuckled without humour. “You should see this bloke he’s with. He’s… perfect.”

Sighing, Prim set the spatula down in the bowl and walked to the kitchen island, sitting herself down across from Bilbo and taking his hand in her own.

“It sounds as if Thorin’s very fond of you,” she said kindly, rubbing her thumb comfortingly over the ridge of Bilbo’s knuckles. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

Bilbo huffed out an exasperated breath, pulling his hands from Prim’s and scrubbing them roughly over his face.

“He’s perfect, and I’m an unemployed, crippled, charity case.”

“Hey, come on,” Prim scolded him sharply, standing up and flicking the kettle on as she pulled two mugs from the cupboard near the window. “Stop that. One, you’re not unemployed: you’ve already agreed with school that you’re going to start again after the Easter holidays.”

Bilbo dragged his hands from his face, propping his elbows on the counter and looking at his cousin dolefully.

“Two,” she continued, as she dropped two teabags into the mugs. “You are not ‘crippled’ and that’s a horrible word anyway, Bilbo Baggins. You’re doing fine, and you’re not even using your cane anymore. That’s a good thing.”

“And three,” she said, grabbing a teaspoon from the drawer next to the sink. “Don’t you ever call yourself a charity case. You are family, and that’s all that matters.”

She finished with her hands on her hips, eyebrows raised expectantly at Bilbo as the kettle whistled cheerily behind her.

“Besides,” she shrugged, turning away and pouring boiling water into the two cups. “You provide free babysitting, and god knows I’m in desperate need of that.”

Her words startled a laugh from Bilbo, who sniffed and wiped his eyes roughly before gratefully accepting the steaming mug of tea from Prim.

“Thanks,” he murmured, a contrite smile pulling at his lips. “Sorry for the tantrum. God, I’m being pathetic.”

He sighed, rubbing at his forehead in annoyance.

Prim came to sit beside him, her own mug cradled in her hands.

“You’re not at all,” she said kindly. “You’ve just had a bit of a shock. I’m sorry, Bilbo; I never would’ve pushed you to go to his class if I’d known.”

Bilbo waved her off dejectedly.

“You don’t need to apologise, Prim,” he said softly, offering her another small smile. “You were just trying to help. You did help. Ben said I’m further along in recovery than even he thought I would be by this point, and I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t pushed me.”

Prim smiled, taking a sip of her tea.

“Are you going to keep going?”

Bilbo paused for a moment, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth. It was ridiculous, but he couldn’t deny that the thought of going back to class and spending an hour listening to Thorin – let alone spending time one-on-one with him – and knowing that he was not only unattainable, as Bilbo suspected he always had been, but also unquestionably unavailable brought about a dull ache in Bilbo’s chest that he wasn’t sure any amount of deep breathing could assuage.

You are being ridiculous, you silly man.

He shook himself.

“Yes,” he nodded decisively. “Yes, I am. It’s good for me.”

Prim beamed.

-

It was not, as it turned out, good for him. Or at least, it didn’t feel that way. It felt bloody awful. Class started as it always did, everyone making small talk with one another until Thorin arrived and began the session. The moment Bilbo saw him, he thought for one alarming moment he was actually about to cry again and the lump in his throat only made him feel even more pathetic than he had done as he’d limped his way to the studio, his hip inexplicably aching in a way it hadn’t done in weeks. When Thorin offered him a warm, welcoming smile, Bilbo found himself completely unable to return it; it was all he could do not to get up and run from the room, shoes and coat be damned.

About halfway through the practice, Thorin made his usual rounds, adjusting a position here, advising on a modification there. When he arrived beside Bilbo’s mat and placed a warm hand on his ribs, gently pulling his torso in a fraction, Bilbo found himself inadvertently flinching. He didn’t miss the look of alarm that flashed across Thorin’s face, and Bilbo spent the remainder of the class studiously avoiding his gaze, quickly rolling up his mat at the end of the session and fleeing out the door and down the spiral staircase, his hip protesting angrily with every step.

He spent the rest of the day in a grump, wasting a few hours staring at his laptop screen as he half-heartedly tapped out a new lesson plan for the Summer term. By late afternoon his hip was aching so badly he had to fish out his bottle of prescription painkillers from the bathroom cabinet; the same ones he’d stopped taking just after Christmas because he honestly didn’t feel he needed them anymore. He downed a couple with a gulp of lukewarm tea and flopped back down into his desk chair, scrubbing tiredly at his face.

Sighing in resignation, he leaned forward and opened up his computer again, typing in the address for the studio’s website. He scrolled miserably down the list of classes for next week, knowing he should sign up as usual, knowing that if he didn’t his hip would start to seize up again and very quickly he could be right back where he started.

He hovered over the sign-up button for Thorin’s class, chewing thoughtfully on his bottom lip. His eyes flickered upwards to the class before his: a Beginner’s hot yoga session taught in the first-floor studio. He’d seen on occasion its attendees filtering out of their room as he was arriving for his own class, mopping sweat from their brows with gym towels and laughing with the instructor, a tiny, curly-haired woman called Beth who couldn’t look less like Thorin if she tried.

Glancing at the window and seeing the freezing sleet outside, Bilbo nodded decisively to himself and tapped his details into the online form. Hot yoga in February sounded ideal. Hot yoga, no Thorin.

Perfect.

-

Monday morning found Bilbo lingering for much longer than he usually would in the shower, letting the warm water wash over him as he delayed – whilst refusing to acknowledge what he was doing – leaving the house for his first session in the earlier class. The walk to the studio took far longer than it should have done, partly because Bilbo was dawdling and partly because his hip was aching and it was that, more than anything, that stopped him from turning around and just sacking the whole thing off. He needed the practice, and if his stomach twisted unpleasantly when he stopped climbing at the first floor rather than the second, he wasn’t going to think too much about it.

The past week had seen him lurch violently between dreadful self-pity and sharp, visceral self-hatred; as lonely and as defeated as he felt, he knew that he was being unfair to Thorin. Thorin, who had never offered or promised anything more than mentoring and friendship, and to whom Bilbo couldn’t bring himself to deliver any sort of explanation for his sudden disappearance. It was a cowardly, cruel path he’d chosen, and he knew it, and he loathed himself for it.

The class was almost full by the time he pushed the door open, the balmy warmth of the second-floor studio nothing compared to the wall of heat that hit him as he stepped inside. It was like getting off a plane in a foreign country: hot, humid, and something for which Bilbo was completely unprepared. His saving grace was the new vest and pair of shorts he’d pulled on rather than his old t-shirt and jogging bottoms get-up; it only took a few minutes of practice for him to feel incredibly grateful for the lack of excess fabric touching his body.

The session was hard – harder than his first session upstairs had been – and by the end of it his new vest was clinging disgustingly to his torso and he’d drained his entire water bottle, wishing he’d brought a second. Despite himself, his body did feel better for the practice; his hip felt less stiff than it had done for the past few days, his shoulders less tense, and his muscles felt pleasantly used. His mind, however, was no clearer than it had been when he’d awoken that morning, and as he left the studio and said goodbye to his new classmates, he tried not to think about the fact that any changes in his mood and demeanour since last September may, in fact, have been less attributable to the yoga itself and more the result of something else entirely – or rather, someone.

A month passed; four weeks spent settling into Beth’s class, attending meetings at school with the Head of Maths to discuss his return to work after Easter, and, above all else, steadfastly avoiding Thorin. The new class was, at least, doing wonders for his physical wellbeing, the heat of the first-floor studio soothing his joints like nothing else. He even got around to gratefully returning his old, borrowed mat to Prim, finally purchasing one of his own from the sportswear shop in town – and taking the long way home afterwards because he needed the fresh air, he insisted, not because it meant he could avoid walking past that restaurant across the road from the bus stop.

On a rainy Friday morning Beth approached Bilbo after practice, noting his improvement over the past few weeks and wondering aloud whether he might even be able to move up to the Intermediate class on Thursdays.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” he chuckled, stooping to wipe his mat down and roll it back into its carry-bag.

Beth laughed.

“You’re getting too good!” she teased, tossing him his water bottle. “Honestly, you joined the studio in what, September? And now you’re showing me up.”

She shook her head in mock frustration, and Bilbo rolled his eyes.

“Just because I can finally manage to hold myself in crane pose without falling flat on my face now, it hardly means I’m about to take your job, Beth.”

He grinned at her, shouldering his mat and heading over to the coat rack at the back of the room.

“Do you teach the Intermediate class too, then?” he called over his shoulder, battling with the coat hanger currently refusing to relinquish his jacket.

“No, no,” Beth said as she returned to the front of the studio to roll up her own mat. “Thorin takes that group.”

Bilbo’s heart seized painfully.

“Oh,” he hedged, willing his voice to remain neutral. He stayed facing the coat rack as he tried to school his expression back into a mild, indifferent smile before turning back to Beth. “I don’t know,” he reasoned carefully, pulling on his jacket. “I think I’d be better staying in Beginners for now.”

Beth shrugged.

“Suit yourself.”

Bilbo nodded, flashing her another hopefully-convincing smile as he waved his goodbyes and stepped out of the studio, pulling the door shut behind him.

“Bilbo!”

God, please just let me leave.

It was Ellie, his neighbour from Thorin’s class, standing at the top of the first flight of stairs – blocking his exit, Bilbo noted with slight panic – and giving him a broad smile as she adjusted her nose ring.

“We haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Just… trying something different,” Bilbo smiled, awkwardly gesturing at the door to Beth’s studio.

“We miss you upstairs,” Ellie pouted. “You should think about doing both sessions.”

Bilbo nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, buttoning his coat up and glancing at the stairs down to the lobby, hoping Ellie would get the message. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Well,” she smiled, stepping aside. “Don’t let me keep you.”

Bilbo threw her another quick smile and a wave, brushing past her to hurry down the steps into the lobby and out of the door, where he made a quick left turn in the opposite direction to Thorin’s flat and didn’t slow down until he was three streets away.

This was how he operated now. Constantly vigilant as to where Thorin might be at any given moment and what the likelihood was that Bilbo risked running into him. The real danger came from the fact that Bilbo knew Thorin had a somewhat erratic schedule that he seemed to decide upon on the day. Sometimes he’d been on time for their classes, sometimes a few minutes late, and sometimes, Bilbo recalled, he’d get to the studio hours before anyone else to complete his own practice alone. Consequently, Bilbo soon found himself living in a perpetual state of anxiety whenever he was in the vicinity of the building, knowing that even the fifteen-minute window between Beth’s class finishing and Thorin’s class beginning wasn’t necessarily safe. Which was why he had taken to running everywhere and being generally dismissive to everyone around him as he all but sprinted between the door of the first-floor studio and the street outside.

He suspected, glumly, that his luck would only hold out for so long, and it was on a grey morning in late March when Bilbo was hurtling down the spiral staircase, fiddling with the buttons on his jacket as his yoga mat swung erratically from his shoulder that he found himself suddenly coming to an abrupt stop halfway down the steps, crashing solidly into something in his path. Something big, and warm, that caught him with strong hands and held him steady before he realised exactly what he’d slammed into.

“Bilbo?” Thorin said, shock evident in his voice.

Bilbo gaped at him.

“You ok?” asked Thorin uncertainly, casting a cursory glance down Bilbo’s body before releasing his grip on his arms.

“Uh, yeah,” Bilbo spluttered, his heart hammering in his chest. “Fine. Sorry about that.”

He chuckled awkwardly, his instinct to push past Thorin and run for the door battling with the fact that his feet appeared to be glued to the metalwork beneath him.

Thorin took a step back down the staircase, putting himself, for once, at eye level with Bilbo.

“I saw you’d joined Beth’s class,” he said softly, to which Bilbo nodded silently. “Enjoying it?”

“Erm, yeah,” Bilbo shrugged, his brain still providing white noise and little else. “It’s… good.”

Thorin offered him a small smile.

“Good,” he nodded.

The silence that followed was truly one of the most uncomfortable Bilbo had ever experienced, which was impressive considering he tended to measure his life in uncomfortable silences, usually caused by his own bumbling ineptitude. True to form, when he did eventually speak, it was to babble nervously a split second after Thorin himself had started talking.

“We can still have our sessions on Wednesdays if-”

“Well, I’d best be going actually, so-”

“Oh… ok,” Thorin nodded again, giving Bilbo a faint smile as he stepped aside to let him past, and Bilbo didn’t have the courage to reason through the undeniably hurt expression on Thorin’s face as he squeezed past him, almost dropping his mat in his haste, and all but sprinted down to the lobby and out into the street beyond.

Chapter Text

By April, Bilbo was back at work and feeling every moment of the extra exertion the return to full-time employment was taking on his body. He had planned to leave the studio for a couple of weeks, keeping all his down-time free for lesson planning, marking, and otherwise getting back into the swing of things, but by the Wednesday of his first week back it became clear that wasn’t an option. His hip, not used to having to sustain eight hours of constant standing a day, was unbearably stiff, his mind a chaotic jumble of lesson plans, practice exam papers and coursework, and Bilbo longed for the soothing heat of the first-floor studio, the way he knew his muscles would melt into the mat at the end of a practice, the tension of the working week slipping away. Between appallingly early mornings in his classroom, staff meetings that overran, and trying to spend as much of his suddenly diminished weekends as possible with his cousins and Frodo – missing them all something terrible now that he wasn’t at liberty to leisurely pass his afternoons over cups of tea with Prim – it was usually long after dark that Bilbo found himself with any free time and he’d been relieved to find that Beth also taught a bi-weekly evening practice. He signed up readily for the next available session and, over the coming weeks, learnt that the later class had the added benefit of being at a time when Thorin tended to take a couple of hours to himself to work on his own practice, leaving him safely ensconced upstairs and leaving Bilbo free to come and go from the first-floor studio as he pleased without the constant anxiety that he was going to run into Thorin on the stairs, again.

The first week of May brought lighter evenings and a spell of unseasonably warm weather, the studio like a furnace to Bilbo’s already sweltering body. His Tuesday practice pushed him harder, physically, than any he could remember, and at the end of the session he drained his second water bottle before flopping back onto his mat and pulling his left knee into his chest, the studio emptying around him.

“Everything alright, Bilbo?” came Beth’s voice from the other side of the room, where she was tidying blocks into a large, rattan basket.

Bilbo opened his eyes.

“Fine,” he called, stretching his leg back out and slowly pushing himself back up to seated. “Just needed a minute.”

He rubbed at his hip, pressing his thumb firmly into his joint in a pale imitation of what Thorin used to do during their Wednesday practices. It helped, a little; by now his hip was well used to the motions Bilbo put it through twice a week, and the ache he had once felt after every class was unquestionably lessening, practice by practice. The after-class massage he’d been missing since February wouldn’t even be necessary soon, physiologically-speaking. But then, that wasn’t really the point.

Glancing up, he watched as Beth crossed back across the room in his direction, a slight look of concern on her face. He raised his eyebrows expectantly; he suddenly felt like he was back at school and was about to get a telling off for something he didn’t remember doing.

“Bilbo,” she began, settling herself cross-legged at the side of his mat and fixing him with a keen gaze. “Are you getting everything you want out of this?”

Bilbo blinked.

“What?”

“I mean you’ve been coming to my class for a few months now, and the improvements you’ve made, physically, are…” she shook her head, her eyes widening slightly. “Amazing. I can tell how committed you are.”

She paused, still peering at Bilbo, the slight furrow between her brows persisting.

“I just feel like you’re holding something back.”

An unpleasant, gnawing feeling started pulling at Bilbo’s stomach, his heart beating a little faster as he questioned Beth’s apparent alarming powers of deduction.

“Like there’s been something on your mind all this time,” she prompted gently. “And you’re having trouble letting go of it.”

A charged silence fell between them. There was no way, Bilbo reasoned, Beth could possibly know the real thinking behind why he’d transferred to her class, or why he avoided the second floor like the plague, or why – even as his body hummed contentedly after every practice spent moulding himself into new and challenging poses – his mind remained distracted, the restless anxiety clouding his thoughts never truly quietening like it used to. He’d spoken to no one about Thorin aside from Prim, but, it seemed, had done a less credible job of hiding his preoccupation than he’d hoped.

A long moment passed and then, not altogether convincingly, Bilbo chuckled.

“Ha,” he grinned, wagging a finger at her and narrowing his eyes a little. “I thought you were a yoga instructor. Not a therapist.”

Beth smiled at him, kindly, and shrugged.

“Sometimes I can be both.”

Bilbo paused. His grin faded slightly as he considered her, his teeth worrying contemplatively at his bottom lip.

“There’s nothing,” he said at length, shrugging his shoulders and returning her smile. “It’s all fine.”

“Alright,” she nodded, her voice soft. “I just wanted to check.”

The gnawing feeling in Bilbo’s stomach was quickly replaced by an ugly, disconsolate twist of guilt as he rolled his mat and towel up and slid his feet into his shoes, shouldering his bag. Lying to Beth – sweet, motherly Beth – felt strange, and wrong, but telling the truth and admitting just how pathetic he had become was too mortifying a prospect to even consider. “Yes, Beth, I’m actually only here because I’m worried that I might possibly be in love with the man upstairs but you see, he has a boyfriend who looks like a Greek god and I left the house this morning without realising that my cardigan had baby sick on it so really, on balance, I’m fucked, and apologies if I seem a little distracted as a result.”

He paused at the door, frowning.

“Beth,” he said quietly, looking back at her over his shoulder. “Thank you.”

She smiled.

“Anytime.”

Bilbo pulled the door shut gently behind him, huffing out a discontented sigh as he headed for the staircase and prayed, silently, that he could just get home without any more existential crises befalling him.

The universe, Bilbo was beginning to realise, was rarely so kind.

Reaching the bottom of the spiral steps, Bilbo looked up to find himself confronted with a jarringly familiar shock of blond hair, a black leather jacket thrown casually over one shoulder as the man – the man – laughed, leaning nonchalantly against Evie’s desk. The artfully-ripped blue jeans had been replaced by a pair of artfully-ripped black jeans, a pair of Wayfarers tucked carelessly into the back pocket, and he flashed Evie a winning grin when she finally looked up from her computer.

 “Just tell Thorin I’ll see him tomorrow,” he said as he blew lightly at the candle on the desk, the flame dancing and flickering erratically, and Bilbo saw Evie roll her eyes.

“Yes, yes,” she said, shooing him away from the candle and pointing to the door. “I’ll tell him. Now get out. Leave me alone.”

The man laughed again, pushing away from the desk and striding confidently across the lobby and out into the fading evening light, tossing a roguish wink in Bilbo’s direction as he passed him. Bilbo stared after him, rooted to the spot at the bottom of the staircase.

“He’s trouble,” Evie chuckled, going back to her screen, a smitten smile pulling at her lips.

“Is he?” Bilbo asked mildly, glancing over at her whilst resuming trying to tug the zip up on his jacket.

“He’s terrible,” she said fondly, shaking her head. “No idea how Thorin’s tolerated him for thirty years.”

“Oh, so they… grew up together?”

“Well I should think so,” she smiled, glancing up at Bilbo. “Being brothers and everything.”

Bilbo froze, his hand stalling on his stubborn zip.

“What now?”

Evie blinked at him from behind her desk.

“That was Frerin. Thorin’s little brother. Didn’t you know?”

If someone were to ask him later, Bilbo couldn’t have begun to estimate how long he stood there on that bottom step, zip halfway up, blinking blankly at Evie until she frowned a little and went back to her work, occasionally eyeing him warily across the room.

Frerin. Thorin’s little brother.

“I had younger siblings,” Thorin’s voice from months ago echoed in the otherwise currently blank chamber of Bilbo’s brain.

“My sister started to take control a bit, try to look after the three of us.”

“Oh… my god.”

Evie looked up again from her desk, her eyebrows furrowing in concern.

“Are you alright, Bilbo?”

Bilbo started at her, his mouth hanging open slightly. Not an unjustified question for her to ask, he reasoned distantly, considering how he must currently look.

He shook his head in an attempt to clear it, heart pounding in his chest as his brain caught up with proceedings and he realised, with something akin to horror, what he was about to do.

“Is Thorin still here?”

“Erm, yeah…” Evie said, confusion still evident on her face. “Upstairs, I suppose…”

“Right,” Bilbo nodded, turning on his heel. “Right. Good.”

-

The sun was finally slipping away below the horizon, its last rays burning through the tall windows at the side of the building and casting a fierce, amber glow over the spiral stairs as Bilbo took them two at a time, his heart hammering against his ribs. This was insane. Reckless, impulsive, almost definitely going to fail; wholly atypical of Bilbo in every way and yet somehow, so obviously the right course of action. The only course of action. The startling realisation that he had, through moping and avoidance, completely wasted the past four months on account of one naïve assumption and his own crippling inability to face the situation head-on hit Bilbo as hard as the damn motorbike that started this whole thing, the unexpected moment of clarity a shot of adrenaline as he reached the top of the steps and threw open the door to the studio. And found it empty.

Frowning, he scanned the room, seeing the mats and blocks piled neatly in their usual places, the overhead lights dimmed, the only movement in the quiet studio the occasional glint of light as a mote of dust danced through one of the golden beams pouring through the arched windows along the far wall.

Bilbo huffed out a breath, pulling the door shut and hovering, uncertainly, at the top of the steps. He scratched distractedly at his curls, trying hard not to think of the empty studio as some sort of omen; the universe telling him precisely how bad an idea this whole endeavour was. Shaking his head, he quickly descended the spiral stairs to the first floor, pushing back open the door to Beth’s studio and finding her alone, now engrossed in her own practice.

“Sorry,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over Beth’s music, all manners deserting him as his brain continued on its one-track train of thought. “Have you seen Thorin?”

Beth blinked at him from her inverted position against the wall, her legs stretched up vertically above her as she supported her weight on outstretched arms.

“Erm, no?” she supplied, confusion writ across her upside-down face.

“Ok,” Bilbo nodded, stepping back out into the hall and letting the door slam behind him as he rushed down the last flight of steps into the lobby.

Evie looked up at him from behind her desk, her bewildered expression returning as she shrugged at him in exasperation.

“Bilbo, what’s going on?”

Bilbo shook his head.

“He’s not there,” he said, breathless, and he wasn’t sure whether to attribute that to climbing and descending two flights of stairs in quick succession or sheer panic at what the hell he was doing.

“Oh,” said Evie, frowning. “Well he must’ve gone home when I was in the loo. Sorry.”

She shrugged again, still watching him carefully.

“Right,” Bilbo nodded, blinking absently at a point in the middle distance as he considered his next move. “Right.”

Bursting out onto the pavement and leaving Evie calling his name behind him, Bilbo turned and took in the row of cafés, houses and businesses stretching out ahead, curving neatly round the parkland at the other side of the cobbled road.  The air was still warm even as the sun sunk further beneath the horizon, a soft, golden glow cast over each front door and as Bilbo took in the sheer number of them, he desperately brought his mind back to any conversation where Thorin had mentioned where he lived. He knew it was close, and he knew it was towards the south end of the street rather than the north. He knew it was a loft, so he immediately discounted the first row of properties as he passed them; restaurants and bars with top floors, some with roof terraces. He quickened his pace, hurrying past a greengrocer’s, a bookstore, a teashop, all closed for the evening. Several townhouses followed, their grand front doors offering no intercoms for apartments, and Bilbo kept walking, his heart still pounding rapidly.

A minute from the yoga studio, he found himself outside what looked like an old mill building; three storeys of weathered, red-brown brick, blankets of creeping ivy clinging to the masonry, then a sloping roof with huge wood-framed skylights cut into it, one cracked wide open in the balmy evening. Bilbo stopped, considering the single unpainted door at the end of the property. It opened directly onto the pavement, an old brass knocker hanging on the aged top panel, and there were no flat numbers or buzzers but something about the place felt so distinctly Thorin that Bilbo found himself walking to the door without ever making a conscious decision to do so. He slammed the heavy metal ring against the wood erratically before taking a step back, fruitlessly smoothing down his hair with a slightly trembling hand.

A moment passed, and far too soon adrenaline forced Bilbo to reach forward and rattle the knocker again, clanging it heavily against the door repeatedly until the door swung open abruptly, and Bilbo was met with Thorin’s bewildered face on the other side.

He wasn’t alone.

Dressed only in his loose grey trousers from the studio, Thorin clasped a small, struggling, ginger mass of hair and whiskers to his bare chest with one hand, the other still gripping the side of the door as he stared at Bilbo in shock. The cat wriggled fervently, seemingly trying to drag itself up Thorin’s body with tiny, furry paws, and in the distraction all rehearsals for precisely this moment that Bilbo may or may not have secretly entertained over the last seven months swiftly vanished.

“Would you like to have dinner with me?”

It was out before Bilbo could stop it, his words garbled and his voice louder than he’d intended, surprising himself. A long silence followed. Bilbo stood frozen in place, his eyes wide and slightly panicked as he watched Thorin’s hand pause, the scruffy cat finally escaping its owner’s hold as it sprung up to settle on Thorin’s shoulder and time, for a moment, seemed to stand still. Distantly, Bilbo heard a car passing slowly on the cobbled street behind him, music drifting lazily through the warm evening air from the bar a few houses down, but Thorin remained maddeningly silent, his expression entirely unreadable.

The cat meowed, staring at Bilbo with yellow eyes, and Bilbo felt his face beginning to heat up in pure, abject horror that this may be turning out to be the single biggest mistake of his life when after what felt like an eternity, Thorin let out a short, quiet sigh, and his mouth pulled into a gentle smile.

“Yes.”

Bilbo blinked.

“What?”

Thorin’s smile grew, his lips curving upwards into a grin as he chuckled softly, gazing at Bilbo from across the threshold.

“Yes,” he said again, nodding as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his grey trousers, the cat still perched neatly on his right shoulder. “I would love to have dinner with you, Bilbo.”

Chapter Text

“Did you enjoy the party?” Thorin mumbled, his index finger tracing small circles in the palm of Bilbo’s hand where it rested against the white linen, a warm beam of morning sun spilling through a gap in the curtains and turning Bilbo’s skin a glowing amber under Thorin’s ministrations.

“Yes,” Bilbo replied softly, watching Thorin’s fingers paint their slow patterns. A smile pulled at his lips. “I enjoyed what happened afterwards too.”

The gathering for Bilbo’s birthday hadn’t been a late one; the fading evening light drew the revellers inside not long after eleven, and by midnight Thorin’s large, open-plan kitchen was empty save for Bilbo, Thorin and little Bombur the cat, who was snoozing happily in his basket by the door. Empty cups had been collected, plates stacked in the dishwasher, and Bilbo had been making a start on washing the wine glasses by hand when Thorin had quietly come to him, wrapping strong arms around the smaller man from behind and leaving a trail of warm, tempting kisses down the side of his neck. At Bilbo’s soft moan he’d found himself gently led into the bedroom and coaxed to sit on the edge of the expansive bed, where Thorin had fallen to his knees in front of him and slowly brought him to the most exquisite completion he could ever remember. An hour passed, Bilbo’s eager reciprocations drawing sounds from Thorin that easily eclipsed any imagined sound his mind might’ve guiltily dreamt up in the past nine months, and the early hours had seen them fall asleep entwined together under a single sheet in the warm night air.

“Remind me how that went,” Thorin murmured, bridging the gap between them on the pillow and taking Bilbo’s lips in a slow, lazy kiss.

Far from being their first embrace, a morning together in bed was new, uncharted territory. As their friendship had done the previous year, so did their relationship now grow slowly, organically, through early morning walks taken hand-in-hand in the parks near the studio, and long, quiet evenings spent exploring one another on the sofa in Thorin’s loft. Respectfully on Thorin’s part and somewhat shyly on Bilbo’s – who, even weeks later, still hadn’t quite adjusted to this blissful new reality – their nights had not yet progressed beyond gentle kisses and Thorin pulling Bilbo close against him as they watched a film together, before Bilbo whispered his goodbyes and made his way home, a lingering smile on his face the whole journey.

“I missed you,” Thorin had said softly that first night, his voice earnest. They’d gone to their favourite vegan café by the studio, neither one of them wanting to delay things unnecessarily with travel or waiting for reservations. Bilbo had barely slept after their reunion on Thorin’s doorstep, and he’d spent the whole of the next day in a terrifying state of nervousness, joy and relentless self-doubt, so certain was he that there must have been some misunderstanding between the two of them the previous evening and this was to be simply a reconciliatory dinner between acquaintances, and nothing more.

Bilbo had looked up at Thorin then, taken aback. It had never occurred to him that Thorin would actually miss him and the time they spent together. Thorin had other students, no doubt countless other friends and Bilbo had, he’d realised then, never considered himself a particularly important part of Thorin’s life, and the discovery of how wrong he’d been had brought with it a surge of happiness that was promptly stamped out by a heavy, regretful guilt.

“I’m sorry,” he’d murmured, frowning at himself. “I shouldn’t have just disappeared like that.”

Thorin had understood, waved him off kindly. A joke about speaking to his brother about public displays of familial affection had Bilbo shaking his head, blushing, and a silence had followed, punctuated only by the occasional hiss of the coffee machine behind the counter, the chatter of the other diners seeming distant, muted to Bilbo’s ears. He’d held his breath then as, after a moment, the other man moved his own hand a fraction closer to his across the table, an index finger extending just enough to lightly rest on Bilbo’s knuckles.

“I thought it was just me,” Bilbo said quietly, not quite daring to meet Thorin’s gaze.

“It wasn’t,” came Thorin’s deep reply, and Bilbo’s heart leapt, his throat a little tight as he watched his hand, seemingly of its own accord, turn under Thorin’s touch until his palm was facing up, his fingers carefully twining with Thorin’s.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

-

A soft buzzing brought Bilbo back to himself, Thorin groaning quietly as he reached for his phone on the bedside table, tapping the alarm to silence before rolling back over to Bilbo, a warm hand running up his side under the covers.

Bilbo pouted.

“You have to go.”

“I have to go,” Thorin murmured, though his hand didn’t move from where it rested warmly on Bilbo’s hip. “Evie will fall out with me if I ask her to cover another class.”

Both Evie and Beth had allowed the pair of them this happy honeymoon period and been glad to cover any of Thorin’s classes if it meant Thorin and Bilbo got to spend more time together – something that puzzled Bilbo for the first fortnight until Beth admitted to him that the two girls had been waiting for this for the best part of a year, and even had an old bet between them on when Thorin and Bilbo were going to admit their feelings for one another. They’d respectfully abandoned it in the early spring when Bilbo had switched classes, the rift between him and Thorin apparently having not gone unnoticed, but learning of its very existence in the first place had made Bilbo’s face burn scarlet. An upcoming renovation at the studio was now, however, demanding most of Evie’s attention and patience, and they both knew it was time to get back to reality.

“You could come,” Thorin said softly, smiling at Bilbo across the pillow. “They’ve all missed you.”

“I’m not sure,” Bilbo hedged, chewing distractedly at his bottom lip as he watched Thorin roll over, pushing himself up from the bed and pulling a vest and a pair of sweatpants from the old oak dresser. “Isn’t it a bit inappropriate?”

As much as Bilbo longed to rejoin his old class – for Thorin, for the friendly group, for the gentle, flowing practice – some old, prudish part of him insisted that participating in a class where he was essentially shagging the teacher was in every way wrong, unacceptable and sure to rile up the rest of the students, who by now must all know about the new dynamic to his and Thorin’s relationship. As Bilbo had learnt during his first class back with Beth following his dinner with Thorin, not even yoga studios were havens from gossip.

Thorin shook his head, the smile still pulling at his lips.

“I promise you, Bilbo,” he said, tugging his vest over his head before kneeling back on the bed to lay a chaste kiss on Bilbo’s lips. “Nobody will mind.”

-

They took the short walk to the studio hand-in-hand, the early summer sun already blazing overhead as they cut through the park to hear the last refrains of the dawn chorus. Bilbo chanced frequent glances up at Thorin, content to listen as the other man spoke freely about his plans for a new workshop he wanted to run at the studio next month, his voice becoming uncharacteristically animated as it tended to do whenever he was caught up in new ideas and Bilbo noted, fondly, that it was the same inflection Thorin had come to use when making plans with Bilbo; a note of passion, of almost youthful excitement lifting his usually slow, calm speech.

They reached the studio far too soon and Bilbo held back for a moment, tugging gently at Thorin’s hand. The other man looked back at him, puzzled, and smiled.

“Alright?”

Bilbo nodded.

“Hey,” Thorin whispered, a hand coming to tilt Bilbo’s chin gently upwards as he leant down to leave another tender kiss on Bilbo’s lips. “It’s going to be fine. Nobody will mind.”

“It’s not that,” Bilbo said softly, smiling. He wasn’t sure what it was, really. Why he felt it so necessary to pause here, on the street outside the studio, and take a moment for the morning rumble of traffic behind them to fade to a distant hum, and with it the chatter filtering through the open windows of the café next door and even the bright birdsong drifting across the cobbles from the park until it was just the two of them, suspended, somehow, in a perfect bubble, untouchable by anyone or anything else. He felt, in that moment, that there was something to be said. Something he’d felt for months, although never named out loud, and something that he was now finally allowed to speak and all he had to do was open his mouth and tell Thorin, who, as ever, was waiting patiently there for him.

“Move, boys. People have got lives to lead.”

The bubble burst, and Bilbo blinked dumbly at Evie as she bustled past them, her arms full of what looked like a new delivery of studio mats. She sighed, shaking her usually perfect hair out of her face as she adjusted the mats and nodded towards the door.

“Stop making eyes at each other and get the bloody door for me.”

Thorin grinned, at last dropping Bilbo’s hand to push open the door to the building, smiling across at Bilbo before following Evie into the building.

Bilbo stood on the threshold, chuckling as he watched Thorin attempt to take some of the mats from Evie, seconds before she dropped them all and they rolled out in every direction across the floor of the lobby, bright ribbons of colour bursting out like hands on a clock face from where Evie and Thorin stood. Bilbo laughed harder, Thorin biting his lip to stifle his own mirth as he cautiously watched Evie’s expression sail from stress to disbelief to, at length, laughter.

And suddenly the interruption didn’t matter at all, and Bilbo stepped forward across the threshold to help roll up the mats and stack them safely in a basket at the foot of the old iron staircase, the task taking them longer than it should on account of their continued laughter and Evie giving Thorin a playful shove, insisting the whole thing was his fault, which only made the two men laugh harder.

Bilbo stacked the last mat on the pile as the door swung open and the first of Thorin’s class spilled into lobby, each of them throwing both Thorin and Bilbo a cheery hello – and the occasional knowing wink – as they filtered past and climbed the staircase to the studio. Bilbo let them pass, his answering smiles tentative and his hello’s soft until he felt the weight of Thorin’s gaze on him, and the fondness in his expression chased away any last remnants of apprehension as Bilbo let his lips pull upwards into a grin before following the last of the group up the stairs, keenly aware of Thorin’s soft footsteps behind him.

Entering the studio, he stowed his shoes and borrowed a mat from the rattan basket to the right of the room, padding over to his old spot by the tall windows that looked out onto the park below. The t-shirt he’d borrowed from Thorin’s dresser was so absurdly large on him he found he had to tuck it into the top of the shorts he’d been relieved to discover folded at the bottom of his overnight bag, and he was sure he looked completely mad, but as the room filled up and Thorin caught his eye with one more gentle smile before taking his place at the front of the studio, Bilbo was just as sure it didn’t matter one bit. 

“Ok,” Thorin said, turning to the class. “Let’s begin.”