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As soon as he woke up Thorin knew it was going to be an odd day. Everything seemed slightly off, a feeling he had come to recognize as a herald of strange events to come, one of the few Durin foretellings that he had ever manifested. In the years he had been in the Shire with Bilbo, he had become familiar with its rhythms and customs (though if he were truly honest, he would admit that he never found it completely comfortable). Everything in the Shire was so... fragile. Ephemeral. The houses were made of wood and dirt; the furniture of wood and cloth. Most rooms were brightly lit and open to the sun, with windows and passages and open spaces. Worst of all, there was only a roof or dirt above, nothing but a thin layer between him and the sky, endless openness that spoke of danger and uncertainty. Still, he thought, gazing over at the bronze curls on the pillow beside him, there were rewards... rewards that could not be had in the mountains. Bilbo sighed in his sleep and shifted a bit, making Thorin smile fondly. A noise made him peer past his sleeping husband to the cap of black curls that were visible poking up from beside his sleeping hobbit. Blue eyes the same shade as his own peered past Bilbo's blanket-covered hip.
"What is it, mizimith?" Thorin whispered, trying not to wake Bilbo.
"Are you awake?" Came the too-loud reply, followed by the fauntling clapping his hands over his mouth and looking miserable at Thorin's shushing gesture. Bilbo's muffled chuckle removed Thorin's hope that the hobbit might sleep in a bit more.
"Frodo is hungry, I wouldn't doubt," Bilbo murmured in a sleepy voice. "And, if he were a proper young hobbit, he might go wash his face, by which time there might be food cooking." A hand extended from beneath the blankets and ruffled the dark curls. With a solemn nod the faunt scampered out of the room leaving the door gaping wide. Bilbo turned long-suffering eyes to his husband, who was still looking at him half-amused and half-apologetic.
"I tried," the dwarf said, fighting back his grin. Leaning forward, he kissed the lips in front of him while ignoring their wry twist.
"Tried indeed," Bilbo huffed in soft tones so as not to be heard outside the room. "I remember a time not too long ago... just a few short weeks ago in fact!... when such problems did not occur. How wonderful it was to wake up slowly in bed with you, and be able to make my own way into the kitchen when I saw fit, and to..." He tried lazily to fight off Thorin's second kiss, but it would have been obvious to any observer that he wasn't fighting very hard. "And I remember also where such kisses led in the days when the smial was our own. Come along though, my good sir, no time for dalliance, there are children to feed, don't you know." Thorin lay in bed and watched as Bilbo got out of bed, pushed the door closed without latching, and pulled off his nightshirt to get dressed. Turning and catching the dwarf admiring his naked form with heated eyes, Bilbo flushed across his chest and neck and turned back around, fighting the smile that seemed intent on appearing. "Honestly, how you expect to lie there looking at me like that and then have me go off to cook food... is there no end to the scandal caused by this dwarf? I always knew..." and Thorin lay back, still smiling, letting the wave of words roll over him. This was another thing he had found mystifying about hobbits in general and Bilbo in particular, back in the long ago days when their acquaintance and then their courtship was new; hobbits liked to talk about anything and nothing as a race, and Bilbo in particular was a bottomless well of words. Most dwarves were fairly taciturn, speaking only when they had something to say, and Thorin more than most; it was a shock to him to encounter someone so in love with social discourse and words in general that he kept up a running commentary on all things for the sheer joy of speaking. By now, after almost thirty years together, it was a source of deep and abiding comfort.
"I will take Frodo today," Thorin said as Bilbo paused to take a breath, prompting a look from the hobbit. "You have a full day ahead of you I'm sure, and he seemed to enjoy coming to the forge with me last week." Seeing Bilbo's brows lower, he cut off the warnings he got every time they had this conversation. "He will be safe. He will not be burned. You know this, ghivashel."
Bilbo drew himself up as though he were ready to be offended, but deflated after a moment. "It isn't... Oh, botheration. I suppose that's fine," he sighed. "He did seem... better... the last time he went with you, and it seemed to cheer him up. I just wish... I suppose if he were going to... but what if... oh, blast and confound it all. I'll just go make pancakes."
The door popped open again, and bright blue eyes reappearing around the edge of the door made it clear that small ears weren't as far away as they might have been. "Uncle Bilbo, did you say pancakes?" A tentative smile was briefly visible, the first seen for over a day, before the faunt vanished again and the sound of scurrying steps headed towards the kitchen. The bedroom door was once again left gaping wide, causing Bilbo's eyes to roll even while his face showed worry.
"He misses his parents so much, and I don't know what to do," Bilbo fretted quietly. Thorin sighed and crawled out of bed, going over to hug Bilbo before he remembered that he wasn't wearing anything but smallclothes. Even so, Bilbo made a soft sigh and leaned into his furry chest before abruptly leaping away as though burned. "Get some clothes on! Standing here practically naked with a child in the house! I can't believe that you..." and he was off again, the flow of words receding down the hall as Bilbo left the bedroom and firmly shut the door, leaving a grinning Thorin to sort out the day's clothing. He reached for his worn smith's outfit, already hearing in his mind Bilbo's familiar tirade about how ragged and dirty the clothes were.
After a breakfast during which Frodo ate more pancakes than Thorin thought Bombur might have managed, the dwarf stood and looked at the tiny fauntling. "Come along, Frodo," he said, "you will come with me to the smithy today." A moment of shock passed across the solemn little face, followed by a gleeful (though tiny) grin as the boy ran off to fetch something from his room. He came back carrying a book Bilbo had given him, showing no indication that he even saw Bilbo's frank look of concern.
Holding the collection of stories up to Thorin, Frodo asked "Can I bring my book?" in quiet voice. "I'll be ever so good, and take care of it, and..." Thorin was nodding before the excuses were even complete.
"Of course, mizimith, bring it along. You can read while I'm working, if you wish." He glanced out the window at the cloudy sky, wondering which way the weather was going. It had been uncertain all morning, seeming headed towards rain only for sun to break through, then clouding up again almost immediately as though ashamed of its exuberance. To Bilbo he said "Weather seems neither this nor that; not sure how much work will need doing today, unless it clears up." Kissing Bilbo soundly (and groping his bum a bit, making him squeak and glare) Thorin went out the door, while Bilbo was still talking behind him.
"Of all the disgraceful.... Take an umbrella, for goodness' sake! And don't let Frodo get rained on, he might get ill! I'll bring you a snack later. Sky and earth, this dwarf would just let..." the words trailed off as they passed out of the small dooryard of Bag End, making their way down the hill to the Hobbiton smithy. He grinned down at Frodo, currently taking in all the sights with a sort of quiet wide-eyed look that resembled a dwarven pebble much more than the fauntling he was.
"Frodo, I expect you not to get rained on." The boy looked up with a worried expression, only to pause at the mischievous twinkle in Thorin's eyes. "You might not get ill, but if you got wet your Uncle Bilbo might expire from sheer nerves, and that would make us both very sad indeed." A startled laugh emerged from the faunt, clear and ringing, but was followed immediately by a look of embarrassment, as though he felt guilty for the moment of amusement. After a moment of staring at a smiling Thorin, Frodo clutched his book closer to his chest and walked ahead, leaving a bemused Thorin to follow along. Bilbo was right, of course; Frodo did miss his parents terribly. Thorin knew the signs all too well; this was a youngling deep in the throes of grief and uncertainty, but he was young enough not to have the words to express the feelings that sat in him like ballast stones. The boy had taken to Thorin immediately, though he never called him by his name. Bilbo was immediately 'Uncle Bilbo', but Thorin was just... 'sir'. Or nothing. Frodo knew his name, of course, but never used it. Odd.
When they arrived at the smithy, they (well, Thorin) lifted the heavy wooden covers off the windows and stoked the furnace back to life from its slumber, putting in fresh coal and clearing the ash from the hopper. Frodo took a seat on the guest stool, sitting with his book in his hands but watching Thorin go about his tasks rather than reading. He had come with Thorin the week before, and like then, he watched closely but never asked a question. Any time Thorin looked up, though, he saw big blue eyes peering at him intently, watching his actions. "If you want to know anything about what I am doing, you may ask," he finally said, and Frodo nodded, looking down at his book as though uncertain. Soon enough, though, he was back to watching as Thorin shaped blanks into nails, bent iron into horseshoes and checked his supply of various items. While the business of the forge was going on, the sun came out and the clouds broke up, revealing a fairly nice day after all.
By midmorning, customers started arriving and Thorin ended up fairly busy despite his earlier concerns. Most were looking for knives to be sharpened or simple repairs, but Tom the stablehand brought him two ponies who had thrown shoes. He was working on them when Bilbo showed up with a midmorning snack for him and the boy. Frodo had cautiously petted the ponies for a bit but retreated with his book once Thorin set to work properly. In the middle of the shoeing, Widow Harbottle showed up with a dented kettle which Thorin took to smooth later, fending off her protests of needing it 'right now!' by explaining that he would get it done by the next day at the earliest. Bilbo watched her go with an amused look as she flounced off in a snit, sharing a grin with Tom. As soon as the ponies were done and Tom gone, Bilbo opened the basket he had brought and shared sandwiches and drinks around, and Frodo ate quietly. With a soft "Thank you, Uncle Bilbo," he crawled back up to his stool and got lost in his book again. Bilbo and Thorin eyed each other a bit sadly, then Bilbo packed up the basket again and headed back up the Hill, muttering the whole time to himself.
Thorin had just begun to eye the dented kettle when Gaffer Gamgee showed up. No sooner had he come in than Frodo slipped outside; there wasn't a tremendous amount of room in the smithy, and the good Gaffer (though the salt of the earth, as Bilbo would say) was a very large presence even when encountered outdoors. Thorin was always amused at himself at how he had adapted to the long, rambling Shire conversations known colloquially as 'passing the time of day'; if he were still a proper dwarf, he'd have gone mad by the time anyone west of the Brandywine got to the point, but in the years he had lived with Bilbo, he had made his peace with it. The Gaffer finally wandered around to what the dwarf presumed was the main point, which was a new set of gardening tools, but he had some ideas about how they could be shaped which were frankly interesting. Suddenly the long-winded explanation wasn't so dull, and Thorin found himself immersed in a proper conversation after all, combining gardening functions with tensile strengths of metal and the best ways to shape things. He forgot Frodo entirely... until the sound of an unpleasant voice outside intruded.
"You wouldn't know about that," sneered a high, childish voice, "because your parents are dead. But my mother says..." What mother said would forever remain a mystery because Thorin roared like an angry bull and threw open the door, seeing the pudgy shape of Bert Hodgefoot jump back from where Frodo was hunched up on a bench. One look at the faunt's miserable face, obviously trying not to cry, and the dwarf's fury redoubled. He whirled on the other boy, glaring.
"Go away, and stay gone. You aren't welcome in my smithy." If the boy had been a dwarf, or if Thorin had been a hobbit, he'd have tanned his bottom for good measure, but given that he lived in the Shire by the sufferance of the community, he knew not to push his luck. Besides, as angry as he was he might hurt the boy. Huffing around the corner, Bert's mother appeared. Constance Hodgefoot was a thorn in the side of the entire Hobbiton market, along with her son, but most folk didn't challenge her. She had appeared just in time to hear Thorin's statement and swelled up like an angry toad.
"Now see here," she blustered at the top of her not-inconsiderable lungs, "who are you to tell my child where he can and can't go? To think I would see the day that a dwarf would have the nerve to try and..." A crowd had gathered, though discreetly, and Thorin could see heads peeping around market booths as people tried to figure out what precisely was going on to make such a fuss. He cut her off.
"For your information, madam, this dwarf is the smith. The smith governs his own forge; it has ever been so. And your son was rude to my..." he glanced at Frodo for a second, "my nephew, and he isn't welcome. And that's final. Good day." He was biting his tongue to speak in proper Shire style, and not give her a proper dwarven telling-off like she deserved, her and that spoiled son of hers. Frodo sniffled miserably and the sound went through Thorin's heart as though it had been Kili or Fili making it.
"Well!" Constance huffed and puffed, clearly working herself up. This, Thorin knew, is why so few of the other shopkeepers would challenge her. The whole family was profoundly unpleasant but she was known throughout the Shire for her sharp tongue. He hoped she would withhold it because he didn't think she would like the result if she... "The absolute nerve! That some outsider would come into the Shire, take up with some disreputable hobbit like Mad Baggins, and then have the cheek to tell honest people where they could go, without so much as a by your leave! I should go fetch the Shirriffs right now and have you put out! Someone should teach you how to treat your betters, I should think. If..." That was it. Thorin's vision flashed red.
"Listen to me, you wretched creature," Thorin growled, standing taller and (by the expression of the crowd) suddenly appearing much more menacing. She drew back, startled and seeming a bit frightened, though Thorin hadn't taken a step towards her. "I was fighting orcs at half your age, long before your grandfather was born. I was born to be a king, and took back a kingdom with the hobbit you just insulted so casually, and he is worth more than you and your ill-mannered brat combined. My betters indeed! You wouldn't be my better if you were twice the hobbit you are, and you wouldn't be the better of Bilbo Baggins if you were made of truesilver head to toe and crowned queen of Gondor besides. And if you think you or your shirriffs are the ones to teach me otherwise," he dropped into a battle stance he hadn't stood in other than to practice for decades, hammer held in one burly hand, "then come along and do so." Thorin knew he was far out of line, and that Bilbo would have an absolute fit, and all the rest, but just seeing Frodo crying because of this petty little bully was more than he could take (though he admitted a wee bit of shameful amusement at the horror on said bully's round little face at this moment). Before Constance could say another word, Gaffer Gamgee's braying laugh from the smithy boomed out over the crowd.
"Ee, there's you told!" he shouted. "Not before time, neither." At this, various of the onlookers, including several of the other shopkeepers, could be heard snickering, some hiding their chuckles behind their hands. All it took was one glance around to realize that everyone was laughing at her, and all of her bravado seemed to run out. With a huff, she snatched up Bert's hand and dragged him off, muttering. Thorin felt a rush of shame now that the heat of the moment was past. Gamgee was still laughing and wagging his head, looking delighted.
"I... shouldn't have done that," Thorin said. "Thank you, though. For... intervening." He felt something hit his leg, and looked down to see Frodo clutching him around the waist with his face pressed into Thorin's filthy shirt. He cupped one hand behind the dark curls and patted the boy on the shoulder for comfort.
"Nay, lad, 'twere long past time someone stood up to 'er! Suppose she'll think twice before tryin' to push through you again! And didn't you half look imposin'!" He was chuckling occasionally still, snorting and grinning. "She'll be mad as a stuck goat for a while, though, so mind how you go. I'll just pop down to the Three Pipes and tell what went on before she can spread some story, bein' as I saw the whole thing. That'll settle it right down. We can finish with the tools some other time." He wandered off, cackling to himself. "... made of truesilver head to toe and crowned queen of Gondor, that's rich, oh that's rich indeed!" As the old man stumped off giggling, Thorin looked down at Frodo and sighed.
"Well, I suppose it's time to get back to work," he said, but it took a while to get the faunt to let go of him and settle back on the stool.
The afternoon went by fairly quickly, with the other stallholders and shopkeepers stopping by in ones and twos, bringing this and that "for Bilbo". He finally had to buy a basket to carry all the food and knickknacks up the Hill with him, and the basket seller grinned at him and thanked him in a quiet voice. He hadn't realized quite how long or quite how badly Constance had been terrorizing the Hobbiton merchants, it seemed. Frodo was practically attached to his hip for the rest of the day. The late afternoon sun was pooled on everything, putting a golden cast on the world and making each yard and window box look like treasure as he made his way back up the Hill with Frodo in tow. The faunt held Thorin's hand on the trip home for the first time, finally tucking his book into the basket so as to maintain a firmer grip on Thorin's fingers. Thorin paused to admire the tree atop Bag End, knowing that he was likely to be walking into a stern discussion at the very least. Gossip spread through the Shire on winged feet, Thorin knew, but sometimes he wished it would at least pause for breath. He had barely made it into the yard when the round, green door of Bag End popped open and Bilbo was glaring at him.
"Well, it seems as though someone was busy indeed!" Bilbo sounded furious, and Thorin's head sank a tiny bit into his shoulders. The hobbit ignored the dwarf's attempt to get past him with the basket. "As if you hadn't created scandal enough, you really..." Frodo's screech of outrage interrupted Bilbo and made both his and Thorin's heads turn in shock to the faunt.
"You leave him alone!" Frodo shouted loudly. "Uncle Thorin was protecting me! And.. and that boy was mean, and his mother was too!" Bright blue eyes were snapping in a glare that was fully the equal of an enraged Thorin. "And you're not going to yell at him! So there!" This was the most emotion Frodo had shown in the entire month he had lived with them, and the furious little face showed no trace of the hesitance, grief or misery that had seemed lodged there forever. The surprise was enough to completely interrupt Bilbo's train of thought, and he visibly deflated.
"I..." Bilbo blinked in surprise, then again. "Yes, you're... quite right. Yes. Um." Thorin slipped past him with the basket, Frodo hot on his heels. Uncle Thorin. Uncle Thorin! His eyes were prickling, even as he told himself he had gotten foolish in his old age. Bilbo, meanwhile, was standing with an odd look on his face, squaring off once again with Thorin's tiny but fierce protector. For the first time, Bilbo noticed the basket. "What... what is all this? You went shopping? Why..." he began picking through the items. "A rhubarb pie? A loaf of... Marigold Burrows' rosemary bread? Thorin, what...?" Once it became apparent that Bilbo wasn't going to start shouting again, Frodo walked over to Thorin and took hold of the edge of his shirt, staying right by his side.
"These are gifts for you, ghivashel, from the other people in the market," Thorin said gravely. "After my discussion with Missus Hodgefoot, they seemed to be in a generous mood." Bilbo looked at the basket, then back at Thorin, back and forth again, before a tiny grin made a reluctant appearance on his face.
"I see," he said softly. "I take it from this that everyone was... clearly distraught at what you said." He snickered, eyeing the stash of food and other items. "Quite distraught indeed."
"Gaffer Gamgee was there as well," Thorin said, pretending indifference, though seeing Bilbo's humor restored pleased him tremendously. "He went off to tell the story at the Three Pipes. Since, as he said himself, he'd seen the whole thing." Bilbo snorted.
"Off to get free drinks off half the Shire in exchange for the story, more like," he said in a sniffy, put-upon voice, but by now Bilbo was wearing a proper grin, one that made Thorin feel warm inside. "Well, Thorin Oakenshield, it would seem you're becoming quite a hobbit in your old age." Thorin chuckled but there was a sound of irritation from near his waist.
"He's a dwarf, not a hobbit," Frodo said in a just-so voice. "And I'm glad. I'm going to grow up to be a dwarf too. Then I can fight off bullies and worcs." Thorin and Bilbo eyed each other. This was shaping up to be an interesting evening.
Later, after a long dinner in which a very stubborn Frodo refused to believe that growing up to be a dwarf wasn't simply a matter of intention and training, Bilbo and Thorin began preparing for bed. Thorin had washed off the grime of the forge, wondering if Frodo was going to follow him into the bathroom as well, so clingy had the faunt been all night. He read Frodo a bedtime story, something traditionally Bilbo's job, and smoothed the cap of dark curls where it lay on the pillow. "Good night, mizimith," he whispered, and the faunt sighed in his sleep, snuggling deeper into his pillow. He crept out quietly, easing the door shut, and turned to face the hobbit smiling fondly at him in the hallway.
"Well, Uncle Thorin," Bilbo said softly. "Ready to put another hobbit to bed?" Chuckling, he went into the bedroom with his husband and shut the door. It had been an odd day, after all. A strange day. A very unusual day. And he wouldn't trade the events of the day for all the gold in Erebor. Wrapping himself around Bilbo, he snuggled down in his own pillow and drifted off to sleep.