Chapter Text
You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others . . .
—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
You’re not sleeping in you bed tonight,
you’re hoping now to catch whats keeping you awake,
just your body’s mistake,
something to fix fast . . .—Lucy Wainwright Roche, "The Bridge"
There’s rain tapping on the windowpane when Bilbo Baggins opens his eyes, squinting against the pale morning light. His nose is cold and there’s a dull ache behind his eyes. Groaning, he turns over and smothers himself with his pillow, burrowing further into the quilts. It’s still early May, but the Shire rains are cool, and bare toes on chilled wooden floors are not what Bilbo wants right now. He wants to go back to sleep, or better still, to go back to last night and tell himself not to have that fourth ale. Or was it the fifth? He never remembers his nights these days, which worries him. It’s not that it’s anything new—this has been happening for years—but usually, if he just concentrates hard enough, he can see things as if he were watching them from very far away, through a clouded glass, the images blurred and the words muffled, but enough to get the general sense. Who he talked to, what he did, where he went. Lately, though, he thinks and thinks and gets nothing but a headache.
It’s well past second-breakfast by the time Bilbo drags himself out of bed. Shuffling to the kitchen with his quilt around his shoulders, toes curling on the cold flagstone floors, he yawns and nearly trips over his walking stick. Who left that there? Bilbo tugs the curtains shut over the kitchen window and generally feels pathetic as he steps into the pantry and tries to decide what he can cook that will be even remotely appealing. He can’t remember when, exactly, but for days, weeks, possibly a month now, his appetite has been next to nonexistent. It’s the reason he doesn’t go out anymore, begging off teas and dinner parties. To be a Hobbit and not enjoy food isn’t just unheard of; it’s actually unimaginable, enough to make one a social pariah. Bilbo cracks an egg into his skillet and blanches at the smell, pokes it half-heartedly with a spatula. What’s wrong with him? “This is all your fault,” he mutters, and rummages around the mess on his table for a bread knife. Eggs and toast—every Hobbit likes eggs and toast. Surely he will, too.
Three bites in, his stomach turns. Bilbo pushes the plate away. Dragging his quilt after him, he slumps into the sitting room and stokes the woodstove, curls up in front of the warmth with a book he’s already read and tries to take his mind off things. The afternoon sun plays across the wooden floor and the ornate pattern of his mother’s third-favourite rug. Bilbo dozes and reads, or lies on his side, knees tucked to his chest, and studies the houseplant looking forlorn in the corner. He’s never been much of a gardener. Hamfast would be ashamed.
“If you can hear me, I hate you,” Bilbo says, speaking to the ceiling. And then, quieter, “Talking to yourself in empty rooms, now. You really are a Mad Baggins.” The sun is setting by the time he gets up and attempts eating again: leftover toast, now gone cold and limp, and some of Prim’s homemade raspberry jam. Warming his toes by the fire, Bilbo sips a cup of chamomile tea and tries to ignore the feeling that he’s forgetting something more, that he’s supposed to be somewhere. He never goes out at night if he can help it, hasn’t really done so since he came of age. It’s another part of why all of Hobbiton gossips about him incessantly, though his neighbours could talk for days about even the most trivial detail, so they’re not the best scale of measurement. When his parents were still alive, and he was newly of age, Bilbo would often go out to the Green Dragon or some party in the Upper Fields, staying out all night under the stars, coming home at dawn wet with dew, propped up on or propping up two or three other Hobbit lads. It wasn’t so bad, then. It’s only recently that he’s completely lost control, and why it should happen now, some eighteen years after he’s come of age, Bilbo has no idea. Even though it’s stopped surprising him, it’s still not normal amongst Hobbits, to be one person by day and another by night, to have two natures inside of oneself, each wanting to get out. The only practical advice he’s ever received was years ago from a friend of his mother’s, who told him to accept it, that if he could reconcile his desires, everything would sort itself out. That hasn’t proved helpful, mostly because Bilbo has no idea what he wants, and more pressingly, why is it only he who finds himself in this state? His mother used to chalk it up to the Took heritage in his blood, but then, she never woke up as a young lass having no memories of her nights. Why him? His family have always been the odd ones out; now that he’s the last Baggins of Bag End, it’s only gotten worse. Bilbo dreads falling asleep at night. He’s almost positive nothing very dreadful happens—he probably gets a bit drunk, or says something a bit too blunt to one of the elders, or composes new songs on the spot—but the fact that it’s happening at all, and keeps happening, actually worries him far more than he’d like to admit. Not that he has anyone to admit it to, these days.
“Mad Baggins,” Bilbo whispers again, and tilts his tea cup, watches the firelight flicker on the glossy surface. When will it happen? When will the change come over him? If he could just stay awake all night, would he still be himself in the morning? He’s tried it before but can’t remember now. By the time the tea is gone and the fire has burnt down to coals, Bilbo can feel his limbs getting heavy, his mind clouding up. He makes himself stand up, move around, paces a circuit around the room, worrying the rug underfoot, but his steps are getting slower. Shadows creep in around the corners of his vision, shifting blurs that he can’t properly look at, spots here and there that fade out when he blinks his eyes. This is the worst part, worse than waking up the morning after; this is the moment he loses control. It’s not fair, Bilbo thinks, and then he’s gone, and someone else is standing in his place, in his body, wearing his day-old trousers and a smile that doesn’t belong to him.
----
In an inn just outside of Michel Delving, Thorin Oakenshield frowns into a mug of ale and hunches his shoulders. There’s a loud hum of conversation all around him, but no sign of the voice he’s been waiting—stupidly, he tells himself—to hear. His cloak is damp from the rain and his stomach is rumbling, but the coin in his pocket is just enough for the ale and a room for the night. Eyeing a plate of sausages at the next table, Thorin wonders how observant Hobbits are. Even if they did notice, he could definitely take them in a fight. But the whole purpose of coming here was to sell his skills, to find some work as a blacksmith, save up enough to provide for the coming winter. Starting an inn brawl is hardly the best way to ingratiate himself. If he were Dís, he’d smile charmingly at someone and receive a free dinner in exchange for some banal conversation, but Thorin’s never been good at either smiling or pleasantries. And his last-ditch hope seems to have stood him up. There’s no sign of the young Hobbit who bought him a meat pie and ale after ale last night, who had, inexplicably, come unto Thorin, touched his arm and leaned up against his side. Thorin scowls at the memory and clamps his jaw shut, turns away from his neighbours’ food.
It’s been two weeks or so since he left the Blue Mountains behind. The morning he left, under the cover of fog, he’d forbidden himself from looking over his shoulder for one last glimpse of the place he’d spent so many years in but never called home. Home was Erebor. It might as well be on the other side of the world, for all that Thorin can’t get there. All he has are the clothes on his back, his axe, his sword, his boots, and his smithing tools. He’s in no shape to go on some great quest, and that’s exactly what Erebor would require: a great quest, an army of dwarves armed to the teeth, ready to oust the foul Smaug and reclaim their homeland. It’s a dream he’s had for too many years to really believe in anymore. Thorin has had to become practical. Has humbled himself, working for a pittance for the Men of various outlying towns. The Hobbits aren’t warriors; they have no need for weapons, nor statues or monuments to age-old victories. But they are farmers, and Thorin has learned to make neat, efficient scythes and durable ploughshares, and at least when he stands amongst a crowd of Hobbits they don’t tower over him.
None of which means he’s enjoying himself. Thorin downs the rest of his ale and stomps off to his room for the night—little more than a closet, with not quite enough headroom—to glower at the wall. He should have known better than to think something good had come his way. And yet it’s so hard to shut his eyes and not see tousled blond hair and a sharp smile and all the things he’s never had. Grumbling, Thorin tucks his cloak in tighter around his shoulders and reminds himself of why he’s here: Dís, and her boys, and his people back in the mountains, all counting on him. It’s still early autumn and they’re doing all right. In his heart, Thorin knows they won’t last another winter, not if things stay the way they are now. Their numbers are already too few. Whatever it takes, however useless the title feels, he is King-in-Exile of Durin’s folk and the burden has fallen to him to protect his people.
When morning dawns he rises with the sun, leaves without breakfast, and makes the trek down to the old mill. The pipe that feeds the water wheel needs replacing, and the gears of the wheel itself have grown rusted and mossy with disuse. When the miller approached him last night with an offer of work, Thorin wanted to scoff—fixing a watermill is hardly his idea of a worthy application of his skills. But payment is payment, and the miller promised food and goods in exchange, including some sets of clothing just the right size for Dwarf lads. Sharpening his axe, Thorin watches the water flow and thinks of the proverb he learned just last night: “The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill,” Bo Took had said, pitching his voice low, leaning in close. Thorin suspects there was some double meaning there, but linguistic games have never been his forte, particularly not in Westron, not when whispered into his ear by some blue-eyed Hobbit in a crowded inn after dark.
Thorin chops wood to stoke his makeshift forge with more vigour than is necessary, the grip of his axe a familiar weight in his hands. Bo Took, as he’d introduced himself, was the first Hobbit Thorin has ever met whom he immediately felt would make a fair dwarf. That is to say, they couldn’t stand each other. It was largely Bo’s fault; the Hobbit seemed bent on infuriating Thorin at every turn, always underfoot, always coming back with some cutting remark. But then he’d treated them both to a full supper and challenged Thorin to a drinking contest. There wasn’t a clear winner, and by the time they staggered out of the inn together Bo was asking Thorin to come home with him, and Thorin was this close to saying yes. He tells himself, now, splitting log after log, that he was just after a bed for the night with no additional cost, but he can’t deny that there was more than a bed on offer. That much was obvious.
As he hammers out the steel from the old pipe, Thorin does what could charitably be called brooding. He’s angry with Bo for not returning last night, and equally—or possibly more—himself for expecting more. They hadn’t made any promises, and Thorin’s not some young lad playing the desperate suitor. So there’s no reason for him to ask for anything more, particularly not when he’d been the one to turn down the initial offer. “Suit yourself,” Bo had said, and didn’t even give a second glance as he slipped away into the crowd. Thorin has the distinct impression that someone else was on the receiving end of that offer not long after, and the thought makes him scowl enough to frighten away the miller, whose name Thorin has learned is Sandyman, and who has come to check on his progress. That won’t do; the Hobbits are already wary enough of him, and he needs their business. Schooling his features into a more acceptable mask, Thorin starts setting up the cross-shaped framework for bending the pipe to form the proper curve. Sandyman comes back as he’s wiping his brow and offers him, hesitantly, a plate of biscuits and a pitcher of water.
“Thank you,” Thorin says.
“It’s coming along,” Sandyman observes. Thorin supposes he should say something in return. But social niceties have never been his forte, no matter how hard he tries. It used to be so easy—glare at the proper person, and whatever he needed done would happen without words. Standing at his father’s side, beside his grandfather on the throne, he could have had nearly anything he wanted without any worries. It’s no use thinking of that now, of course. The wealth of Erebor, the long royal lineage, none of it made any difference against dragon-fire.
“It is,” Thorin tells Sandyman, dragging his mind back to the present moment. “I should be finished by this evening.”
“We haven’t had a smith about these parts in years. Much obliged for your troubles.”
“No trouble,” Thorin says, and tries to force a smile. Sandyman doesn’t look convinced.
“I’ll let you get back to it, then,” he says, and is gone before Thorin can reassure him. With a sigh Thorin starts feeding the pipe through the roller. It's early summer; the trees are full of leaves. Sweat cools on the back of his neck as he works, bringing a welcome chill. Up in the mountains, they're still getting frost every night. Dís will send the boys out to chop wood and stoke the fires, trying to heat their temporary dwellings. They haven’t dug nearly deep enough into the rock to secure proper heat. Dwarven pride keeps them from making a new homeland when their old one still sits empty, waiting for the re-taking. Empty, of course, except for the one force they haven’t been able to overcome.
For someone with such terrible memories of fire, Thorin certainly spends a lot of time working with it. He’s burnt off his eyebrows more times than he cares to count; his knuckles are nearly permanently singed. The smell of smoke never quite leaves his clothes. If he hadn’t already cut his beard short in disgrace, he’s certain it would’ve caught fire already. It’s not that he isn’t careful. But the forges in Erebor were works of art, the pinnacle of structural engineering, and now he’s bending over a bonfire in some Hobbit’s backyard. Sparks fly. It’s unavoidable. Dís used to make him a salve for burns but he’s long since run out. Are the herbs in the Shire even the same as the ones they used to pick on the slopes of Erebor, or the few they could buy—always overpriced—from the town at the base of the Blue Mountains? Bo would probably know, Thorin thinks, and then shakes his head. He’s here for work, nothing more.
It’s not uncommon, amongst Dwarves, for a man to take up with another man. Their women are few enough, and of equal standing; nothing is lost by it, and no one begrudges or judges those who choose to do so. As long as they’re not the King, that is, or his royal lineage. Thorin knows he needs to think about courting someone from back home, one of the several friends Dís has introduced him to over the years. Even though he has Fíli and Kíli, his sister-sons, as his heirs, they are not enough for him to bring an end to the line of Durin. What if something happens to the boys? What if one of them, or both of them, prefers men? Thorin cannot be the one to burden them, anymore than he already has, bringing them up in the wild, putting them to work, leaving them on their own with a grieving mother. It’s been years since their father died and Thorin knows the boys don’t remember him, but Dís does. She stays awake at night, sitting up by the fire or standing in the doorway and looking out at the stars, and Thorin knows—because he’s grown too used to keeping an eye on people—from the look on her face that she’s seeing the past, not the present. The way things used to be. It’s nothing more than a memory now, something written in Khuzdul in the charred books of court records, something no one will ever read. Unless and until, that is, they retake Erebor.
The inn at Michel Delving, he learns, has the unlikely name of The Bird and Baby. Thorin sees neither of those things as he ducks in the door at the end of the day, and for that he is profoundly grateful; what he wants now is a hot meal, and something to drink, not someone’s wailing child. The bird would be acceptable, provided it was dead, cooked, and on his plate. The inn is noisy and dim, Hobbits and travellers mingling around the tables and clustered in front of the fire. Like most Shire structures, it’s low-roofed and wood-paneled, and Thorin itches for some solid rock instead of soft, loamy earth, for cavernous halls and deep chasms. He could never live in a place like this. Sticking close to the outer wall, he makes his way around to a small table by one of the windows. He’s starving. There’s a Hobbit lass with a serving tray weaving in and out of the crowd but he can’t catch her eye. Sandyman the miller paid him well; Thorin could afford a sizeable dinner. That’s the good thing about the Shire: Hobbits, even the smallest Hobbits, prefer even the smallest of their many meals to be massive.
If only the place wasn’t so crowded, Thorin might get to enjoy a full stomach for the first time in ages. Not even in the Blue Mountains did they sit down to such bounty, and he liked to think that he had set his people up in relative comfort, as best as he could. Impatient, Thorin stands and shoves his chair away from the table. Taking a step back, he connects with something solid. There is a thump and a noise of protest, and when Thorin turns he finds Bo Took at his feet.
Bo, for his part, has his back against the wall and bare feet splayed out before him, and is glaring up at Thorin. “You’re a brute,” he says.
“My apologies,” Thorin says, quick to offer a hand. He hauls Bo up, with enough force that the Hobbit stumbles forward, into his chest.
“Are you doing this deliberately?” Bo asks, looking up at Thorin from under a fringe of pale, mussed hair. Standing this close, Thorin can see the shadows beneath his eyes that are more than the products of candlelight. Bo looks exhausted. He is very close. Thorin could, if he were so inclined, also count the freckles across Bo’s nose.
“No,” he says, bluntly, and lets his hands fall back to his sides, takes a step back. “No, I am not.”
“Well, you’ve done it anyway. Now you’re going to have to make it up to me.”
“Buy you a drink?” Thorin offers, hesitantly.
Bo grins. “That works.”
Stepping back again, but more carefully this time, Thorin waves the bartender over and orders them each a pint and a plate of dinner. As they wait, he asks the question he had been meaning not to: “Where were you last night?”
“Not here,” Bo says. “Elsewhere.”
“Very helpful,” Thorin grumbles.
“Oh, were you waiting?”
“No. I was not.”
“. . . You were, weren’t you?” Bo looks surprised.
Thorin clenches his jaw and looks away. “I wasn’t,” he repeats, firmly. Their food and drinks arrive and Thorin tears into a hunk of bread to stop himself from talking. He’s ever been good with small talk.
Bo eyes him for a minute, considering. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Bilbo is protesting. But then, Bilbo is always protesting. Bo downs half his pint in one go and leans in, across the table, his elbows pushing the plate aside. “If you want me to believe you,” he says, “you’re going to have to try much harder, you know.” He hold’s Thorin’s gaze for a minute, and then leans back. “Now then,” he continues, slicing up roasted partridge as he talks, “I don’t recall getting a proper answer to my question from the other night.”
“Remind me,” Thorin says, hedging.
“What would you say to coming home with me?”
“I don’t know you.”
“We can fix that,” Bo says, tilting his head sideways and raising his eyebrows, deliberately provocative. He runs his tongue over his lips, very slowly—very pink, Thorin’s mind supplies, not helping in the slightest, like alabaster gypsum, or the soft luster of dolomite—and takes another sip of ale.
“You don’t know me, either,” Thorin says, and clears his throat. He turns his gaze away, studying the entirely uninteresting wall.
“We can fix that,” Bo says again. “How about a trade, story for story? What are you really doing here, Mister Blacksmith?”
“Why should you get to start?” Thorin asks, irritated enough to turn back around and face Bo. The Hobbit grins like he’s just won a not-so-minor victory. As he feels the heat rise to his face, Thorin thinks that’s probably true.
“I’m quicker on the uptake. Go on. I don’t buy this ‘nomadic Dwarf’ business. You’re up to something.”
Thorin glances around the inn. Hobbits, mainly, with a couple of Men—no more than four, by his count—and no sign of other Dwarves. No one who would be interested, or listening in. Still, he can’t bring himself to tell the truth. “My family needs the money,” he says instead. “There’s far too much competition for business where we were, so I came out here. Hobbits don’t seem the smithing type.”
“We had a smith once,” Bo says. “But no one knows what happened to him.”
“. . . You know, it’s very difficult to tell if you’re lying or not.”
“Yes, I know. One of my many gifts.”
“Hmm,” Thorin says, troubled.
“Come on, then. Your family needs money, you come here, fix some mill wheels, and then just go back into the blue?”
Thorin flinches. He never said where, exactly, he was traveling from. Does Bo know? Did he somehow give it away, something he said or did, some small clue that he thought nothing of but the Hobbit obviously picked up? Bo looks guileless, but then, Thorin’s seen that face change expression quickly enough and he’s only known it for a grand total of four, perhaps five hours. Straightening his shoulders, he says, blandly, “That’s right.”
“Never to be heard of again.”
“Much like your previous smith.”
“Exactly.”
“What about you?” Thorin asks, changing their course of conversation. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I live nearby,” Bo says, offhand. Disinterested. Guileless. “Tell me about your family.”
“That wasn’t enough of an answer. I told you more than that.”
“No one’s twisting your arm here. You told me of your own volition.”
“Then I can not tell you of my own volition just as easily.” Thorin takes a drink, swallowing slowly as he eyes Bo from over the lip of his tankard.
“So you’re not without tricks either,” Bo concedes. “All right. I do live nearby. Not Michel Delving, but east a ways, over in Hobbiton. It’s a bit . . . quiet there, you might say, for my liking.”
“Perhaps I should have stayed there instead,” Thorin mutters. The crowd has only increased as the hour has grown later, and a particularly raucous—or drunk—gathering of Hobbits have climbed atop one of the tables and started singing.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Bo says, when he follows the direction of Thorin’s glare. “You should see a real celebration, a Feast Day or the Lithedays. What, are Dwarves not given to dancing on tables?”
“No.”
“You’d need quite a sturdy table, I suppose.”
“Wha—” Thorin snaps his gaze back to Bo. The Hobbit is shaking a little with barely suppressed laughter. “I’ll have you know,” Thorin says, darkly, “that we Dwarves build excellent tables. You could have an entire troupe of ponies atop one and it wouldn’t even bend.”
“Good to know,” Bo says, and lets out some of his laughter. “I’ll bring my ponies by later.”
“You have ponies?” Thorin asks. He’s too eager and he knows it. Making himself sit back in his chair and wiping the interested expression off his face with one rough palm, he reminds himself: Be calm. The mountain is not going anywhere. You will get there. Still, ponies would make the journey that much faster; he could get there that much quicker, be home again that much sooner.
“That was a joke,” Bo says, because of course it was. “Do you need a pony? I’m sure someone in the Shire would be willing to sell you one, for . . . wherever it is you’re going.”
“No,” Thorin says.
“All right,” Bo says, slowly, when it becomes obvious that Thorin isn’t going to say anymore. “Well, it’s your turn, so go on.” He waves a hand over the table. “Let’s continue getting to know each other, shall we? And then we can move on to the rest of it all.”
Thorin, faced with an open invitation, cannot think of a single thing to ask. He racks his mind quickly, skimming through topics—boring, all so boring—while Bo watches him, unblinking. Thorin’s not used to being watched so closely. There is something just this side of off about Bo’s face, Thorin thinks, almost involuntarily, and then catches himself. “What about your family?” he asks, voice too loud in his urgency to break the silence. It’s a wasted opportunity, but he has the distinct feeling that if he continued to say nothing, the offer would have been withdrawn.
Bo blinks. “Dead, mostly,” he says, and tosses a potato into his mouth.
“You have my sympathies,” Thorin says, because he has to say something, and doesn’t know what else would be proper.
“Why should you offer them? You didn’t know my family.”
“No, but you did,” Thorin says, and then cringes. Of course Bo knew his family; they were, after all, his family. This is why Thorin shouldn’t strike up conversations, in dimly-lit inns or elsewhere. Dís would be laughing at him, were she here. Of that, at least, Thorin is certain.
Bo is quiet. “I didn’t know them all that well,” he says, after wiping his mouth. “And there is one . . . other. We don’t get on well, though. Not in the slightest.”
“A shame,” Thorin says, and his voice chokes. He clears his throat, repeats, “That’s a shame.”
Waving Thorin’s words aside, Bo says, “He and I each have difficulty accepting the other. He mainly tries to stay out of my way.”
“Why should he?
“Because I’m dangerous,” Bo says, and gives a quick grin. “Or did no one tell you?”
“I must have missed that.”
“A lot of stories about the Tooks round here.” Bo leans back in his chair, and puts his feet up on the table. He folds his arms over his chest and tilts his head to the left. The firelight catches his face, his pale eyelashes, the curve of his nose. “You should try talking to people sometime, Thorin. You might like it.”
“I doubt that,” Thorin says, and tries not to stare at the bare toes before him, or the frayed edges of Bo’s trouser cuffs; though the short pants are mud-stained and worn, the cloth is rich and must have been, at one time, expensive. In his own grimy tunic and leggings, their fabric pockmarked with burns, Thorin feels horribly inadequate. What he wouldn’t give to be in full armour. The question of why, precisely, he feels the need for armour for a simple conversation with a Hobbit little more than half his size is not one he wants to answer.
“You’re talking to me,” Bo points out.
Thorin looks away. “I owed you an apology,” he says.
“Hmm. Well, you don’t owe me the rest of your night, but I’d like it all the same.”
Thorin goes still for a moment. “You’re still . . . interested?” he asks, quietly, and glances up.
“I thought that was rather obvious,” Bo says, and gives Thorin a look that warms the Dwarf’s face, as if he were still standing over the fires of his makeshift forge from earlier that day.
“Er, it is now,” Thorin says, and takes a swig of ale. He could use another pint, or two.
“Out of practice?” Bo asks. He drops his feet, falling forward to land his chair on all four legs.
Beneath the table, Thorin feels a nudge at his boot, and then up his calf. He starts, slams his hands down on the tabletop in surprise. Bo’s eyes go wide, but only for a moment. Then they are narrowed again, narrowed and hot and dark, and his foot slips behind Thorin’s ankle, pulls the Dwarf closer until Thorin’s stomach is brushing the edge of the table.
“It’s all right,” Bo is saying, when the ringing in Thorin’s ears subsides enough for him to hear the Hobbit’s soft voice against the din of the crowd. “Fortunately for you, I’m not.”
Thorin would protest, if he had any ground to stand on. Bo’s right; he is out of practice. The phrase that comes to mind, actually, is “woefully out of practice,” except that Thorin’s not sure he is woeful about it. Or at least, he hadn’t been, all these past years, until right now. Feeling the Hobbit’s heel hooked behind his knee, Thorin’s stomach clenches, and he lets himself be urged forward. The table suddenly seems very small, even for a Hobbit-sized table. No troupe of ponies on this one, Thorin thinks, and swallows, tries to chase away the dryness in his mouth.
“I’ll let you take the lead, then,” he says, and is strangely gratified to see a flicker of surprise in Bo’s eyes. Thorin downs the rest of his ale and digs in his pack for coins to leave on the table. Bo puts out a hand, stopping him.
“If I’m taking the lead,” Bo says, “then it’s my pleasure.” He leaves a pile of coins on the table and stands, comes around to Thorin’s side. “Shall we take this someplace more fitting?” he asks, and offers his arm, crooked at the elbow.
Thorin rises, without taking Bo’s arm. It would look ridiculous, the two of them like that. It should properly be the other way around. He is, after all, the larger of the two; the more imposing, the more likely leader. Some things, he is not yet willing to concede. Bo’s hand drops smoothly to his pocket, as if nothing was ever amiss, and the Hobbit strolls easily out of the inn, leaving Thorin to follow whether he likes it or not. This is a reminder of why he has avoided this for so long. All these negotiations and double-entendres are far too subtle for Thorin’s tastes. Still, he can’t simply walk away, nor even look away from the Hobbit’s back, narrow shoulders and honey-coloured hair weaving through the crowd. Thorin goes after him. There really isn’t another choice.
The air outside is damp with the chill of early summer. Standing under the lantern hanging beside the inn’s front door, Bo looks back at Thorin and again, just for a moment, Thorin finds himself thinking that something is wrong, something is not quite right, but then Bo is turning and the light is in his hair again, and as the door swings shut behind Thorin, the two of them are left in the relative quiet of the road, alone. Thorin steps forward, catches up to Bo, and, emboldened by their new privacy, reaches out and runs his fingers through the Hobbit’s curls, marveling, captivated. Bo laughs, not unpleasantly, and inserts himself neatly beneath Thorin’s arm as they walk away, the light and rumble of the inn at their backs.
“How far is it?” Thorin asks. “To your rooms.”
“Are we not going to yours?”
“We’ve just left mine behind.”
“Is that so?” Bo asks, and laughs again. “So much for my grand exit. Well, unless you’d like to retrace our steps, we have quite a walk ahead of us. Are you up to it?”
“Do you doubt my strength?”
“I doubt your boots,” Bo says. “They’ve seen better days, and if I had any say, should see no more.”
“We can’t all of us go barefoot.”
“And why not?”
Thorin doesn’t have an answer to that, other than the fact that Dwarf feet are not like Hobbit feet, are not so tough, so accustomed to rough use, and it sounds almost insulting in his head, particularly with this Hobbit at his side. Bo is almost delicate, not slender but small, rounded where Thorin is squared-off, smooth where he is callused and sun-burnt. Bo is, by all appearances, the furthest thing from tough. The contrast is fascinating. Thorin doesn’t want to look away.
“Have you never worn boots?” he asks.
Bo shakes his head. “Never in my life. It would be quite the scandal, though. Perhaps I should start.”
“You like causing scandal, then?”
“When it suits,” Bo says.
“Does it often suit?”
Bo smiles, his lips tight, enigmatic, and gives an easy shrug of his shoulders. They are walking in step now, down the dirt road, away from the lights of town. Thorin’s Shire geography is limited; he can tell that they are walking east, but has no idea of how far they have to go, nor what might lie ahead. Presumably nothing he needs to worry about. These lands have been kept safe for many an age. Thorin tries, very hard, not to feel bitter about that. He mostly succeeds.
“I take it you’re not partial to scandal?” Bo asks.
“No.”
“I don’t believe that you’re only a blacksmith, you know. I haven’t figured out quite what you are yet, but I will.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It is.”
Thorin wishes it wasn’t. Why must his heritage come up now, only to complicate things? Often he thinks of how much simpler it would be, were he really only a blacksmith. The entire legacy of Erebor would no longer rest on his shoulders, or at least, not solely on his shoulders. But there isn’t much use in dwelling on fantasies. Thorin learned, long ago, to let go of his dreams and live only by the things in front of him, the people he can reach out and touch, the ruins before him that can be rebuilt.
Bo must sense that he’s made Thorin uncomfortable. He steps out from under Thorin’s arm and takes a few steps away, walking backwards, studying Thorin’s face. Thorin frowns. “All right?” Bo asks him.
“Fine,” Thorin says.
“Can’t hold your ale?”
That actually gets a laugh from Thorin. The idea that this Hobbit could out-drink a Dwarf is absurd, nevermind how their last drinking contest went. Bo grins back at him, and skips around until he’s walking forwards again. They turn onto the main road and head out over the White Downs. Thorin has his pack on his back, and his axe, and a sword at his hip; Bo carries nothing but himself, easy and light. Through thin cloud-cover, stars dot the darkness, Lumbar a soft yellow overhead, Eärendil’s Star a brighter white. Bo points these out as they walk, telling Thorin their histories, the Elvish words coming easily to his tongue. Thorin, surprisingly, cannot find it in himself to be offended at the language. Instead he tilts his head back, studies the stars until his neck begins to ache and he trips over a root encroaching on the path.
“Do Dwarves have names for the stars?” Bo asks.
“No,” Thorin says, rubbing the back of his neck. “We have names for every rock, every mineral, but I fear we’ve spent too much time underground to bother about the stars.”
“It seems a great loss,” Bo says. “So much sky, and you don’t even give it the luxury of a few names?”
“What good are the stars when you’re in a mineshaft beneath a mountain?”
“What good are mineshafts?” Bo counters.
Thorin revises his earlier estimation. Bo would make a terrible dwarf.
“I’ve offended you, I know,” Bo says, “but I’m not sorry for it. And I won’t take my words back, so you can stop scowling at me. You don’t frighten me.”
“No?”
“I’m dangerous, remember?”
“Hmmm. So you say.” A part of Thorin wants to draw his sword, just to see how Bo would react. But he’s not quite that cruel. Instead, he says, “If you had seen what I have seen, the splendour of the mines, you would not dismiss them so easily.”
“Tell me about it, then. Convince me.”
So Thorin tells him—the grandeur of Erebor, its halls shining with golden light, the mineshafts filled with the ringing of hammers and the gleam of mithril, ceilings so high you could not see their ends. Hundreds of chambers, each more splendid than the next, on and on through the mountain, and a bounty of every sort that was the envy of all neighbouring lands. “Every day was the dawn of a new glory, every discovery another step to becoming the greatest kingdom Middle-Earth has ever known,” Thorin says, and fights to keep the emotion from choking his voice. “I could show you such wonders as you have never even dreamt of, like nothing the Shire has ever known. Have you ever seen sunset falling across a hall whose walls are gilded gold?”
“You know that I haven’t.”
“You can’t imagine—I can’t do it justice with words, at least not in your language. It’s more than splendour, it’s . . . I would give anything to see that sight again.”
“Why can’t you?”
Silence follows Bo’s words. “. . . That was long ago,” Thorin says, after a while, “and far away.”
The hills have fallen away to fields, and still they walk on. Thorin doesn’t pay their path any attention, too caught up in memories, seeing not the loamy earth before him but smooth-carved rock, staircases hewn straight into the mountainside. Bo leads them through a stile, little more than a gap in a stone wall, and they cross a pasture, exiting into a wood on the far side, past cows lowing gently in the night. This is a landscape Thorin has never known, so different from his home, so unfamiliar. Bo takes his hand in the shadowed wood.
“Hobbits have keen eyes, you know,” he tells Thorin casually, tugging them onwards. “Keener than Dwarves, or so I’ve heard.”
“I can hardly see the trees ahead,” Thorin admits, blinking his eyes to clear them of the haze of the past.
“For people who live so much in the dark, you would think you’d all be a bit better at this,” Bo teases, glancing back at Thorin over his shoulder.
“We have lanterns,” Thorin retorts. “We’re not uncivilised.”
“I had no idea,” Bo grins. “Mind your step, tree roots in the path.” He helps Thorin over the uneven ground and onwards, twisting to dodge low-hanging branches. “It’s the wrong time of year now, of course, but in the summer months this forest is alight with fireflies. I bet it could rival your rivers of gold any evening.”
“I doubt that,” Thorin says, but smiles at the thought. “Still, I would like to see it.”
“Will you even be here come winter, let alone summer?”
He won’t, and yet it’s easier not to say so. Besides, Bo already seems to know. Finally they come to the edge of the wood, back out into dew-damp fields. In the distance Thorin can hear the murmur of a river. “We’ve just passed through Waymeet,” Bo says. “Or at least the outskirts of it. Hobbiton is across The Water.”
“Is that where your home is?” Thorin asks. “Hobbiton?”
“It is, when I call it home,” Bo says.
“What do you mean?”
“You keep your secrets, and I’ll keep mine,” Bo says, instead of answering.
Thorin has lost track of how long they’ve been walking. In the east, the sky is growing lighter; either his eyes are playing a trick on him, or the hour has grown much later than he thought. Mist is rising from the river ahead, just over a grassy knoll. At Thorin’s side, Bo stiffens and stops short, his fingers cold against Thorin’s own.
“Something wrong?” Thorin asks, turning to look at him. Bo doesn’t answer. He is staring out into the distance instead, unmoving, unblinking. Something is wrong; his face looks wrong. Thorin’s breath catches in his throat. “Bo?” he asks again.
Bo breathes out, finally, a long, slow shudder. “Damn,” he says, very quietly, and then he’s dropped Thorin’s hand; he’s taken off across the grass, running for the water. He’s gone.
“Wait!” Thorin calls after him, but it’s useless. By the time he forces his tired legs into motion, Bo has disappeared, and even his footprints are just soft indents in the wet grass, too hard to follow. The mist curls round about Thorin, and the sound of distant running water fills his ears. He is entirely alone.