Chapter Text
It was high summer, and an unusually hot one at that.
A wind like a dragon's breath had rolled over the hills of the Shire that February. It baked the green fields into seed heads and dried the rivers until they shrunk down to their mudflats. The sheep hid under the shrinking trees and even the most devoted hobbits abandoned their gardens for the cool shade of verandas and backroom parlours. After four years in the Shire, Thorin had mostly adjusted to the temperate climate, but a day like this was unbearable. He was made for deep, cool caverns and snowy crags, windswept tundras and damp, frosty valleys. He tied his hair back onto a knot on the back of his head, stripped down to the lightest shirt he owned and gulped water from the artesian pump in the front yard of Bag End. But he was still too hot to do anything but sit on the porch with a book, shaded by the trellis roses, his face as pink as a squalling baby, sweat soaking his beard and pooling in the hollows of his neck.
Frodo was staying with one of the Brandybuck families this week, as he often did when the weather was warm and he and his cousins could keep each other occupied. Bilbo returned from the market just after noon. He trudged through the front gate with his basket hanging from the tips of his fingers and a handkerchief tied around his neck to keep the sun off. He was almost as pink as Thorin, but Thorin thought it suited Bilbo much better. It looked almost attractive, if it wasn't far too hot to get interested in such things.
"You've hardly moved an inch," Bilbo chuckled as he passed Thorin to fill a bucket with fresh water from the pump. Thorin had sat down on the bench before Bilbo left for market that morning. "Haven't you finished that book yet?"
"I've read about three pages," Thorin grunted. "My thoughts keep wandering off."
"It's too hot to think," Bilbo agreed, pausing as he pushed open the front door to gasp at the cool air flowing out of Bag End. "I'm done for the day. I'm going to lie down and not move until the sun has the decency to sink for the night."
"I'll join you," Thorin said, sticking a rose leaf in his book and snapping it shut.
"Just so long as you don't touch me," Bilbo replied over his shoulder as he headed to the pantry to dump his basket. "It's too hot to touch anybody."
"No fear of that," Thorin grizzled. "Ugh, and Frodo's away and everything. What terrible timing."
"We've got the rest of the week," Bilbo pointed out. "Maybe it'll cool down a bit tomorrow."
In the bedroom Bilbo pulled the curtains and they collapsed on top of the covers on opposite sides of the bed. They faced each other but leaving as much space as possible between them, which wasn't much given the hobbit-size of the bed. Bilbo had left the doors open at either end of the house so thankfully there was a bit of a breeze coming through. Thorin had once thought of hobbit-holes as cramped, crude little halls, quaint in their details and the artistry of their wood-finishings but not much of an achievement. However, there was design in a hobbit's home that he had grown to appreciate over the years, and right now he appreciated it very much. With all the backrooms open, the cool air from these windowless chambers was drawn out through the doors to the outside, and its leaving pulled in fresh air from the afternoon that pooled in the deep rooms of Bag End, cooling down and renewing the cycle. It was quite unlike the many ways that dwarves ensured ventilation throughout their tunnels and palaces, but they were very different abodes with different needs.
Thorin was thinking about old maps of Erebor and Moria as he closed his eyes and began to doze. As his breathing slowed his thoughts sunk deeper into memories of black mines he had visited with his grandfather, the flicker of firelight catching in the veins of gold and silver that ran through the walls. A low rumbling seemed to reach his ears from far, far away, ebbing and flowing through the walls of living stone, and the flickering light grew stronger as he fell utterly into sleep.
---
Bilbo's nose twitched as his mind oozed out of its nap. He wanted to keep sleeping, but something was bothering him. He breathed in deep, his back creaking. The hearth smelled odd, as if someone had spilled oil into the coals, the air sharp enough to make Bilbo cough.
The hearth. Bilbo shifted where he lay, rubbing his closed eyes. He had not lit the hearth in here since last week. It had been far too hot, day and night. And yet Bilbo's face was stinging and scoured as if he'd been sitting in front of the fire too long.
Bilbo's eyes flew open. Smoke danced in tall, thin streams mere inches from his nose, and flames were crackling in the heart of it. Fire! The bed was on fire!
He sat up with a gasp and wriggled backwards, tumbling off the mattress and hitting the rug with a series of thumps. The gasp had filled his throat with smoke and he rolled onto all fours, coughing until it felt as if his lungs must be bleeding, grabbing for the post of the bed to pull himself upright. His eyes were full of tears until he couldn't see more than blurred colours, though even a foot from the bed the smoke was little more than a faint haze in the air.
"Thorin!" Bilbo croaked, wiping his eyes until he could see. He was still woozy from sleep, his vision wavering as he shook his head to clear it. At last he managed to focus, and his hard-won breath turned to rocks in his chest at the terrible sight in front of him.
Thorin lay motionless on the bed with his clothes completely engulfed in fire. It licked across his limbs and shoulders, yellow as the light of a wax candle, dark streaks of smoke pouring off the tips of the flames. The blanket all around Thorin's body was a ring of black cinders, and the bed-curtains hanging from the post behind Thorin's back were already aflame. Thorin's eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted, his hand curled beside his face. Bilbo gave a low, strangled cry and ran for the armchair in the corner. A thick, wool blanket was folded across its cushions. Bilbo flung it open with a snap, sprinted back to the bed and threw the blanket over Thorin's body, leaning over the dwarf to wrap him up completely.
Smoke streamed around the edges of the blanket. Thorin came awake with a jerk, nothing but an odd shape struggling against the smothering blanket, and Bilbo gave a sob of relief that he was breathing at all. The fire of his clothes felt searing hot even through the cover. The burning mattress beneath Thorin bit at Bilbo's knee. The burning curtains were inches from his face, and he had to turn his head away, unable to breathe for the vapors. His eye fell on the jug of water he'd filled from the well just before they fell asleep. He released Thorin long enough to reach across and grab the handle, bringing it up and flinging it over the burning curtains. His aim was good enough to extinguish most of the fire up there, and he pulled down the rest with his bare hands, crumpling the fabric up until the embers faded.
Thorin had got out of Bilbo's grip and his head appeared over the edge of the blanket. He was swearing in ragged khuzdul. "What the blazes is going on?"
"Blazes indeed – out! Get outside!" Bilbo grabbed him, wrapped the blanket tighter around him again and hauled him to his feet, pushing him towards the door. Thorin began to cough, stumbling and gripping the doorframe for a moment before he went on.
The bedclothes were still burning, more freely now without a dwarf and the wool blanket to constrict them. Where had the fire come from? What had been fueling it? Bilbo had to get it under control before the whole house went up. He grabbed the edge of the mattress and heaved it onto the floor, dragging it through the door behind Thorin. The smoke choked him, the flames spread closer and closer to his hands, his spine and knees protested as he crept backwards in a low crouch, dragging the mattress towards the door where Thorin was disappearing into the blinding sunshine. The journey seemed to take hours, but was probably less than a minute before Bilbo finally hauled the mattress out onto the lawn, dropped it and then flipped it over to smother the flames.
Thorin was hunched over on hands and knees, gasping for breath. Bilbo straightened up and tried to walk the five steps to reach him, and immediately swooned, just managing to catch himself before his head hit the grass. He coughed and gulped air until his head cleared, then crawled towards Thorin, who was still bent over with his head hanging low.
"Don't move," he croaked, his hand hovering over Thorin's shoulder. "Let me – let me see –"
He lifted the blanket away slowly. Great flakes of ash came with it, seared hanks of clothing and some powdered cinders that were almost white. Beneath them, the skin of Thorin's shoulder was black and peeling. Bilbo remembered a cousin who'd accidentally tipped a pot of soup over her arm as a child. He remembered the horrible pain she'd gone through, pus-soaked bandages, weeks of touch-and-go infection, and a lifetime of scars that constricted her fingers and made her hide her arm with a shawl at all times. Bilbo swore the worst curses Bofur had ever told him, tears pricking the corner of his smoke-wrecked eyes.
“We need to get water," he whispered, half to himself, but how could he get enough water to soothe Thorin's whole body? The burns were everywhere – they were –
Bilbo realised he could still see hair standing up on Thorin's skin. That seemed odd. Hair would surely have been the first part to burn. Very, very gingerly, he brushed the exposed, black skin with the pad of his thumb. Thorin flinched, a ripple running through his muscles. But the blackness came away on Bilbo's finger, along with a sudden swell of heat that made him hiss in pain. Beneath the ash was a smear of clean, pink, hairy dwarf-skin. The peeling flakes weren't part of Thorin's flesh at all, merely residue from the burned clothes.
"I'm alright," Thorin coughed at last. "Nothing hurts except a stubbed toe."
"It was only your clothes that burned," Bilbo said, tugging the blanket down further. He laid his hand on Thorin's arm. "I don't understand— ARGH!"
"Bilbo!" Thorin twisted his head around, reaching out to him.
"Be careful! Your skin's hot as a stovetop!" Bilbo cried, hunching away and clutching his wrist. His palm was growing fiercely red, the sting rising in pitch until he could barely keep a squeak behind his teeth.
Thorin looked down at his own hands and his mouth fell open. "Bilbo... the grass..."
He'd moved a few inches, and where he'd knelt, Bilbo's carefully tended lawn had wilted to brown, curling leaving, growing black in the centre of the patches where Thorin's hands and knees had pressed. He slowly raised his head to meet Bilbo's eyes. "What's happening to me?"
For a moment Bilbo felt like his head had turned into wood. What was happening? He had no idea. Had Thorin's skin absorbed the heat of the fire like a pan over the stove? Was this a dwarven talent? But he'd seen Thorin burn himself before, on the kettle or when he tried to eat hot soup before it had cooled. Why was his skin now protected? And then Bilbo noticed that the blanket he'd thrown over Thorin's shoulders to quench the flames was beginning to smoulder.
The fire hadn't done this to Thorin. The fire had come from Thorin.
"Get that blanket off," Bilbo sprung to his feet, tucking his burned hand against his chest and snatching the blanket from Thorin. "Go to the pump, quickly, maybe we can cool you down."
Thorin staggered to his feet, hunched over, perhaps to hide his nakedness as his clothes were falling from him in fragile shreds, perhaps simply in some instinct to protect himself from attack. Bilbo wanted to touch his back to reassure him, and only a fresh throb of pain from his burned hand reminded him he did not dare. There was a square of varnished tiles around the pump, a rough mosaic of a rhododendron, which had been Belladonna's favourite flower. Thorin knelt on the tiles and Bilbo filled the bucket as quickly as he could with one hand. Thorin lifted it and tipped it straight over his head.
There was a mighty, furious hissing, and bubbling water turned grey-black as the ash rolled off Thorin's back and splashed across the painted rhododendron. Steam rose in great clouds as Bilbo filled a second bucket, and then a third, his arm aching, his chest stinging from the smoke he'd breathed, the blood pounding through his burned hand. Under the fifth bucket, Thorin shivered for the first time. There was almost no steam now except a faint mist that lifted in gentle whorls once the water had drained down onto the tiles.
"I can feel the cold again," he said, looking over his shoulder.
Bilbo cautiously reached out and put his hand on the back of Thorin's neck. His skin was as hot as a sun-baked stone, far hotter than it should be, but it was no longer searing. Bilbo knelt down beside him on the wet, ash-stained tiles and pushed Thorin’s hair away from his face until he could see his dwarf's eyes clearly.
"Are you alright?"
"Are you?" Thorin countered, glancing down at the hand that Bilbo had slung close to his body. "I'm wet, naked and filthy, but I don't see what else I have to complain about."
"Thorin, you were…” Bilbo swallowed. “You caught fire in your sleep.”
Thorin stared at him. There was a wrinkle in his brow and a quirk in the corner of his mouth as if he was waiting for Bilbo to explain the joke. Bilbo saw the sag in his features and the blood drain from his face as he digested the events of the last few minutes and accepted what Bilbo has said.
“Come on,” Bilbo gripped his shoulder. His skin was still unnaturally warm, but not unbearably so. “Let’s get you inside before the neighbours see.”
Thorin’s shirt and trousers, well-worn but expensive cloth that Bilbo had bought for him over the years, had been obliterated. There was nothing left but faint bands of fragile charcoal around his wrists and ankles, where the hems had been thickly sown. Every crevice and wrinkle of Thorin's naked body was still dark with smeared ash. He looked like a wildman, but Bilbo was intensely glad that he was intact. He ran his hand down the slope of Thorin’s hair, untouched by the fire. His poor dwarf would have been distraught if anything had happened to his hair.
Thorin walked as if in a daze from too much sun. Bilbo still felt weak in the knees and could do little to help him. His head was thick and aching, his mouth tasted of smoke, and his heart was still pounding behind his ribs. He walked Thorin through the parlour to the kitchen and sat him down at the table while he made them a cup of tea. As he worked he held is burned hand to his chest, the fingers half curled, and neither of them spoke. The house stunk acridly of burned varnish and furnishings. While the kettle boiled, Bilbo went around opening the windows and curtains as wide as he could to air it out.
There were black, dwarf-wide footsteps burned into the rug in the back hall, and the faint shadow of fingers seared into the frame of the bedroom door. Bilbo stared at the marks for a long time. He felt nauseous and, for just a moment, more wracked with terror than he had in many years. Once he had faced spiders in the depths of dark forests, fled wolves across mountain slopes, and very nearly looked a dragon right in the eye. Once he had learned that death could snatch you up in an instant, no matter how you fought, no matter how you screamed, and you could not always run or hide or talk it away. But such things were not supposed to cross the borders of the Shire.
Bilbo closed his eyes and swallowed. There was soot everywhere, he told himself. He must start cleaning up before anyone came calling. And he should start with Thorin, who was likely getting his ashy hands all over Bilbo's clean kitchen at this very moment. In the bathroom, Bilbo lit the boiler above the bath and filled it up to the brim.
He returned to find Thorin still sitting in the same place. He looked up at Bilbo. “May I have a blanket?”
“I’ll find you one,” Bilbo gulped. He pulled a clean, linen sheet out of the cupboard – his oldest and cheapest – flicked it open and laid it over Thorin’s shoulders. Thorin closed the sheet it over his chest, one fist balled in the cloth, and got up to fetch two mugs and the plate of leftover scones from that morning.
They sat down in front of their afternoon tea for a long time. At last Thorin said what Bilbo had been thinking and trying hopelessly to fight. “It must be because of the dragon.”
Bilbo dumped two heaped spoonfuls of sugar into his tea. His hands were beginning to shake. He could feel the come-down of the fear and panic draining the iron from his veins. He took a deep sip of his tea, though it was still too hot, really. He wrapped his injured hand around the mug before he remembered what he was doing and a fresh dose of pain flashed across his palm. He hissed and withdrew his arm, resting his hand on his lap. Thorin glanced at it with mirrored pain in his eyes.
"You should put water on that—”
Bilbo shrugged. "It's not that bad. And at least the whole thing seems to be over now,” he said brightly.
For some time they sat at the table watching the swirls of steam rising from the stem of the teapot. At last, Bilbo spoke.
“Why do you suppose it happened all of a sudden?”
Thorin shook his head and sipped at his tea. He licked his lower lip. “I was dreaming about him, I think. It felt like just a flash, but he was there, and then you woke me up.”
“You've dreamed about Smaug before," Bilbo pointed out, and did not miss the way Thorin flinched slightly as he said the name. He paused and then went on firmly. "What was it about this time? How did it make fire out of nothing?”
Thorin shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“The heat,” said Bilbo. “It must have been something about the summer heat.”
Thorin hunched down into the sheet and stared at his tea. He was a mess, dirty and clothed in linen, his hair hanging in dripping knots. But still it felt like an ordinary, domestic sight for him to be sitting at the table with a steaming mug. And that made it all much, much more frightening to Bilbo. If something had happened to cause this – if they'd been set upon by a wyrm flying out of the sky and Thorin had lit up like a firecracker and beaten it back, or if he'd caught some winter contagion and burst into a fiercer fever than any the doctor had ever seen, that would have been easier to think about. It would have made sense. But during an ordinary sleep on an ordinary day, his dear dwarf had almost burned their house down with Bilbo inside it. There must be an explanation, there must be a way to keep it from happening again. There simply must be.
As Bilbo sat fretting over the question, Thorin reached out for his tea and Bilbo noticed that his hand was shaking so badly that the liquid sloshed and slopped right over the edge of the cup. Thorin hissed as it splashed on his hand, but endeavoured to raise the mug to his lips. He sipped a little and winced, putting the cup down again quickly. "Ah, that's hot."
"Is it?" Bilbo leaned over the table and took a sip. "It's alright. Do you want some more milk in it?"
"Y-yes, p-please," Thorin said. His voice sounded slightly slurred as if he'd had too many ales. Bilbo stood up sharply and reached over the table to touch the side of his neck.
"Bless me, Thorin, you're freezing!" he cried, and hurried around the table. Thorin turned sluggishly to look at him. Bilbo grab his hand. His calloused palm was as icy cold as if he'd been sitting in a snowstorm with no shoes on.
Bilbo was seized by a terrible panic. If Thorin could burn hot as a furnace one minute, then perhaps he would sink down as cold as ice the next. But surely even a tough dwarf could not survive such a state. Surely his heart would stop. After the impossible events they'd already gone through already today, it seemed not only probable, but the only likely option.
"We must get you warm!" Bilbo gasped. "Wait here, drink the tea, oh dear, oh no…"
He ran for the linen closet again, this time grabbing a proper woolen blanket, and hurled it around Thorin’s shoulders, right over the sheet. Bilbo pulled him to his feet and he stumbled over the bench. Bilbo had to wrap his arms around his shoulders just to keep him upright. Bilbo’s burned hand hurt terribly, but he could not even spare the attention for it.
“Come on,” he ordered. “Hold it together, old man, we’re going to get you warm again.”
---
Thorin felt drowsy to the point of collapse. His skin was numb, his fingers too stiff to hold the blanket around his shoulders, his limbs shaking so hard he could barely make them walk. He felt as disorientated as if a pair of giant trolls were using him for a game of toss-stone. One moment the world had been smoke and Bilbo’s frightened face shouting at him, then the dousing water from the pump had knocked him half senseless. He had felt warmed, and yet the sun and thick summer air had not seemed to touch him. At last the cold, deep water from under the earth had sunk into his bones and clung there, eating his heat up faster and faster until he suddenly realised he could not think for the weight of it. He was going to die of a chill right here in the warm, sun-filled house that had been his home for four years. What was happening to him? How?
Bilbo’s voice had gone high and panicky, but his hand on Thorin’s arm was firm, and Thorin trusted him. He always trusted Bilbo, but in this case he had no choice, with his thoughts swimming and his heartbeat sluggish in his chest.
Bilbo made him climb into the tall-sided, copper bathtub in the back room. The contact of the cold metal against the soles of his feet made him hiss, but in a moment Bilbo returned with old, ratty bath-blankets that he laid over the interior surface as swiftly as he made up their bed every morning. He made Thorin crouch down, still wrapped-up, and then disappeared again, returning with a bucket of coals from the parlour hearth which he tossed down onto the tiled recess beneath the bath. Within a few moments Thorin laid his hand against a gap between the blankets and could just feel the warmth of the coals beginning to permeate the floor of the copper tub.
Bilbo had made a third trip to and from the other room, this time with a large bucket of pump-water. “I’m sorry, dear, but I haven’t time to run the water until it’s perfect,” he said, and tipped the bucket into the tub. Thorin yelped as the cold sloshed around his ankles, and then Bilbo twisted a tap above the boiler and steaming water poured out to mix with the cold.
“It’s t-too hot,” Thorin stammered, rising to get out of the tub, but Bilbo insisted it wasn't as bad as he thought and made him sit down again. He fetched another bucket to balance out the temperature and refilled the boiler. He swiped his uninjured hand through the water to test it again, wetting his sleeve almost to his elbow as the water grew deeper. His shirt was already grey from the ash on Thorin’s body, foul as a week-old laundry tub, but Bilbo did not seem worried about staining it. Seeing him uncaring of propriety and cleanliness sent an aching throb of nostalgia into Thorin’s belly. It reminded him of the first months they’d spent together in the ruined Erebor and then on the long road to this home.
“Lie down,” Bilbo demanded, pressing on Thorin’s shoulders, and Thorin went down without a struggle, his knees rising out of the water as he flattened onto his back. The water was still not high enough to cover him, but it filled his ears and soaked his beard. Eddies tugged and sucked his hair at the roots.
He could feel the warmth, but it wasn’t enough. It felt like his body simply soaked it up and chilled it down. Soon Bilbo was emptying the boiler again with another bucket from the pump, and now the water was deep enough to fill Thorin’s mouth, but his head had enough buoyancy to keep him from drowning. He knew dimly that drowning was a bad idea, but somehow it didn’t bother him that much. He was too tired and cold to care.
He drifted in the water, and his thoughts leaked out and floated like oil on the surface, thin and almost invisible thoughts splitting and rejoining. He was aware of Bilbo filling the tub a third time, talking to Thorin and demanding answers. Thorin gave them soggily, not really sure whether he was getting the questions right or not. Bilbo seemed satisfied at least. The steam rose around him and blurred the world. Thorin’s vision had darkened at the edges, reduced to the circle of Bilbo’s face.
“Thorin?” Bilbo’s hands were on his temples, one thumb rubbing over Thorin’s eyebrow. “Stay awake, old man. Are you feeling any better at all?”
“A little,” Thorin said, and smiled at Bilbo. He’d bandaged his burned hand at some point during the filling of the bath, though Thorin wasn’t sure exactly when. There were wrinkles in the corners of Bilbo's eyes and around his mouth. Thorin did not think they had been there all those years ago when they’d first met. He liked them. They moved prettily when Bilbo smiled back at him, like the joins of finely-crafted armour sliding against each other. He did feel warmer, he realised at last. The chill was uncomfortable now rather than unbearable. “Still a bit cold.”
Bilbo sighed. He pulled off his silk vest and climbed over the edge of the tub, pointing his toes daintily as his feet slipped into the water. Always a hobbit at heart. In his trousers and shirt he sunk down into the bath beside Thorin, pushing his half-floating body against the side. With some splashing Bilbo lay down beside him, half on top of him, keeping his bandaged hand out of the water.
“What a bother it is,” he mumbled against Thorin’s collarbone. “This dragon business you’re stuck with. I really was afraid to see you taken ill so suddenly.”
“Ill,” Thorin echoed. “Catching fire is just like a bad sniffle now, is it?”
“For us, it seems so,” Bilbo replied, and kissed his beard, but Thorin felt the tea swirl in his belly. This couldn’t be ordinary now, could it? A daily concern, like the rain, and mice in the pantry?
After a while the warmth seeped into his blood at last. Bilbo wriggled around to the top of the bath and Thorin lay between his legs with his head on Bilbo’s belly. Bilbo soaped his hair and combed it out with his uninjured fingers, hanging his burned hand over the edge of the tub. Thorin supposed it made the hobbit feel better to think that the wash had been the purpose of the bath all along, and not anything more urgent. Not that his hair was likely to be much cleaner, with how much ash was in the water.
The ashes of his Shire-made clothes, washed off to become nothing but grey cloud in the bath.
An ill omen.
“Why the cold?” Thorin asked, rumbling the question to the bathroom in general and not expecting an answer. “Hot is one thing. He—…” he stopped himself. He was not afraid of a name. “Smaug was heated from within. But cold-drakes are of a different race, I’d always been taught.”
“I don’t think it was supposed to happen,” Bilbo murmured into the crown of his head. “I think whatever the fever was, it was a fire meant for a dragon’s body, not a dwarf’s. It consumed you down to your core, perhaps, and the fabric of your body could not keep up with your blood's normal demand for heat once the fever was quelled. I think it just toppled you over like you’d run past the end of your strength.”
“You seem to have a lot of insight into dragons,” Thorin commented.
“Well, I’ve lived with a little one for four years now—” Bilbo started, and when Thorin tensed he wrapped his arms around Thorin’s shoulders, pulling his head against his chest in his embrace. “I’m sorry. That wasn't a funny joke. You’re not a dragon at all. And if you were, you’d know to control your heat and we wouldn’t have had such an odd day.”
The water began to get cold eventually, and the sun outside was growing orange as it sunk down to the hills. Bilbo got out and stripped off his wet clothes, left them dripping over the side of the bath and making the remains of the coals hiss in the recession beneath. He brought towels, and helped Thorin dry off while standing with his ankles in the cooling water – he was still shivering, but only bursts every few moments, and needed only a little help getting a fresh set of clothes on. He was exhausted now, which lent some weight to Bilbo’s thoughts about the cause of the chill. He was also hungry, more hungry than he thought he had ever been in his life.
He tried to help Bilbo with the food, but Bilbo made him sit down. “Cooking will calm my poor heart. I need something to do with my hands,” he fussed, rushing back and forth from the pantry and stoking the hearth up again.
“I’ll tell you what you can do you with your hands,” Thorin muttered, resting his cheek on his knuckles just to keep from falling over if he fell asleep. His eyelids kept falling closed of their own accord while Bilbo was laying plate after plate of fresh food in front of him. Through the fog of the oncoming doze he heard Bilbo chuckle, and then for a moment he plunged down into black sleep. Despite his best attempts, his head fell forward on his neck and then snapped up again as he awoke with his heart racing and his hair all over his face. Fire! Had the fire returned?
Bilbo had not noticed anything. He was still humming an erratic ditty to himself as he cut up the rest of the morning’s bread.
“The sleep,” Thorin gasped. Bilbo glanced over.
“Hmm?”
Thorin rubbed his eyes. “The sleep, and the heat. It must have sent my mind back, it must have reminded me of my time with him.”
He looked up to find Bilbo staring at him with his brow furrowed and his mouth pursed, not in doubt but in a look of intense pity, in a way that Thorin would have considered a grave insult from anyone else. At last he let out a long sigh and brought the breadboard over to the table.
He laid his bandaged hand on Thorin’s arm and said, “Eat.”