Chapter Text
It’s not that he cannot sleep. Although perhaps that might be part of it, but Thorin cannot quite name the reason he feels so…
Restless.
Bilbo’s form next to him is still, covered up to his chin by the blanket. Normally, his husband would have been a great comfort to him and enough that he could easily sleep without a thought spared toward anything else. But not tonight, not after a war has only just ended. Some of the dwarves will see it as a victory, their great defeat of the orcs. But it is Thorin who has to deal with the aftermath.
To deal with those that had betrayed him and all their dead. To be King, so abruptly.
He wishes he could sleep as peacefully as the small hobbit snoring next to him. Instead, he finds himself sitting on the edge of the bed and running his fingers through his hair. There is not too much to be done now.
But then he feels a small hand over his back, traveling up to his shoulder and squeezing it reassuringly. A moment after that, he feels his husband’s chin on his shoulder.
“Thorin?”
He tries to say something, anything, to reassure the hobbit that he is fine but the only thing that comes out is a choked sob.
“Oh, love,” murmurs Bilbo, shifting so that he can hold Thorin’s face in his hands.
He can feel the tears on the dwarf’s face and he wipes them away, hushing him. Thorin ends up with his face buried in Bilbo’s chest. His tears make Bilbo’s nightshirt wet but he only continues calming down the dwarf. He hardly cares.
“I know,” he says when Thorin is no longer crying. “I know it’s hard. But you are going to be a fine king and your people are not going to expect you to just step up onto the throne and not mourn your father.”
“I am not prepared at all,” Thorin tells Bilbo’s collarbone. “Even after all these years of being prepared, I do not think that I-”
“Oh, hush, Thorin Oakenshield,” his hobbit says calmly. “I know you well enough, and I know that you will do just fine as king. But not if you don’t sleep.”
When he pulls away, Thorin can see the bags under Bilbo’s eyes as he kisses his husband lightly. He knows well that he did not sleep much while they were away at war. After all, Bilbo had been ordered to stay behind and wait with those too young to battle (and most of their women, despite many of them being fine warriors, they still numbered far too little).
“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” Thorin says, smiling tiredly when Bilbo rolls his eyes.
“Yes, yes, go to sleep, for I am here and I will be here to lift the weight your crown gives you,” and with that Bilbo forces him back under the furs and blankets, curling up against him and kissing Thorin’s temple until he is asleep.