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“Uncle Bilbo, I don’t know what to do.”
Bilbo rocked back in his wooden chair for the third time and sighed. For some reason, his nephew was convinced that Bilbo would somehow have a different answer for him than the last time he asked ten minutes ago.
“I’m not sure what you’d like me to tell you, dear boy,” he said, reaching across to the adjacent couch and running what he hoped was a comforting hand through Frodo’s curls. “Do you want me to take you back down to the field and we can do something about it?”
“No!” Frodo cried, mortified, and burrowed his face into the woollen throw draped over the back of the couch.
The sounds of the Yule party, the last one before the big day, dying away at last were muffled through the thick windows of Bag End. That was just how Bilbo liked it. He might have started to gather a bit of a reputation for a riotous jig of his own every now and again, but at the end of the day he was still the odd, standoffish – well, in their opinion – hobbit who had limped back from who-knows-where all those years ago.
He’d been very content the past fifty years to spend a polite amount of time at parties then slipping away, unseen and unheard, hours before everyone else. If he got back in good time, he even managed to get in a jam tart and a cup of tea before bed. But this year was different. He’d never had to come home with a heartbroken tween in tow, sulking beside him in front of the fire.
Bilbo admitted to himself that he could have been a little more attentive to Frodo that night. He was still getting used to this whole parenting lark. He happily let Frodo dash straight for his friends when they arrived, finding that he couldn’t relate to the mothers and fathers who spent their entire night with one eye on their children, ready to drag them away from the buffet by their ears at the drop of a hat. Perhaps if Bilbo had managed to capture Frodo’s attention for a little bit and divert the boy away from the dancing circle in the middle of the field, he wouldn’t be in such a state now.
He readjusted his grip on the mug of hot chocolate he’d made for them both. “If it makes you feel any better,” Bilbo said carefully, testing the waters, “they did only dance a couple of times.”
“More than enough,” Frodo huffed. “And then he gave him a flower.”
“It’s only polite!” Bilbo said. “Goodness, if I married everyone I ever gave flowers to as a child, this place would be riddled with spouses.”
That seemed to lighten the scowl on Frodo’s face a little. He laughed weakly.
“I’m sure you could have managed that if you wanted, Uncle,” he said, and now it was Bilbo’s turn to chuckle.
“I’m rather alright how I am, thank you very much,” Bilbo said, ruffling his nephew’s hair with more vigour than when the boy had been crying. “If you plan to fix on a new hobbit boy every week, I daresay I shall have my hands full.”
Frodo shot up in his seat, affronted. “Every week! This isn’t – Rufus is –”
“Kidding, my boy, I’m kidding,” Bilbo said, though he still believed it. Rufus Proudfoot was, for what it was worth, just another hobbit boy. Nowhere near good enough for his Frodo.
Hm. Maybe he was getting used to this parenting lark, after all.
They lapsed into comfortable silence, watching the fire click and crackle. The wind started to cry low and long outside, a seasonal companion to the snow and the Yule party that started this whole business. Frodo was being silly about it all, really, but he was only twenty-two. Silly was what being a tween was for.
“Have you ever felt like this, Uncle?”
“Like what?”
“You know, all miserable over someone.”
For a fraction of a moment, Bilbo almost said no. Then it happened again. That tightening from head to toe, the feeling like all the breath had left his body. And if he did say no, then it would be the biggest lie he ever told.
Bilbo delayed his answer by draining the last of his hot chocolate. He hadn’t really wanted this day to come, to be honest. Not with Frodo, not with his family, not with any of the friends who were actually willing to sit down and listen to his tales of adventure. For when he dropped hints about his life – or when he entertained the youngest hobbits with longer stories around the fire – there was always, always one crucial detail he omitted.
“As a matter of fact, I have,” he said. The sudden thickness in his voice, he knew, had nothing to do with the drink. “Though it’s not a story of flowers and courting, I warn you.”
“Even better,” Frodo said, his shoulders relaxing. “Distract me.”
“I never expected such a thing to come out of my adventure,” Bilbo started. “Why, I was set on getting there with as little trouble as possible and then turning around with nary a word to the lot of them.”
At that, Frodo’s eyes widened. “You needed a push out of the door?” he said, as though the last person he could imagine reluctant to go on a journey was his infamously eccentric uncle. Bilbo supposed it probably was.
He smiled. “Don’t we all?” Placing his cup on the hearth, Bilbo poked at the fire and plumped the cushion behind him before settling back to continue. “Back then, I didn’t hold others in much regard. I hadn’t much care for my neighbours back then either, so anyone from further afield must have really meant trouble!”
And oh, he did, Bilbo’s mind taunted.
“Dwarves, weren’t they?” Frodo asked.
“Mm, yes. One of the company – the leader of our adventure, I should mention – was a very important dwarf indeed. Th– his name was Th–” He swallowed. “They called him the King under the Mountain.”
Frodo nodded. “You mentioned him the last time we had a story night here.”
“Ah, my dear Frodo, but there was lots I neglected to mention to the other children. All of this is for your ears only.”
What he was really saying, deep down, was, do not repeat this to anyone. But Frodo already understood. There was a twinkle in his eye. Just enough of a Took to enjoy the having of a secret and just enough of a Baggins to know how to keep it.
“The King – Thorin, and I, we didn’t get along at first. I think he was perhaps as sceptical of me as I was of him. He didn’t want me on his journey, and I certainly didn’t want to go – but I think, really, that was half of it. We spent many a night learning to tolerate each other with little conversations here and there, and they were mainly made up of complaints. We complained about things together, bickered about this and that, and after a while I realised I rather liked talking to him after all. Then even when our doubt turned to hope, we just…didn’t stop talking.”
Memories flooded back into Bilbo’s bones, of cold nights and starlight. Of wind whistling through dry leaves. Dirty feet, places to rest them. He remembered the way he would warm at the sound of Thorin’s rumbling voice, quiet so as not to wake the others. “I sleep little too,” he had said one night, when they both realised they were the only ones still intentionally awake. “At least there are two of us here to burn the midnight oil.” Slowly, Thorin had started to make everything about the adventure warm. Slowly, it was not only his voice and his presence but his arms, too, wrapped tight around Bilbo’s waist as they drifted off on clifftops and forest floors. Slowly, but not at all like that, Bilbo fell in love.
“It was hard to cope with, even then,” Bilbo said. “I knew it was a bad time to be in love – if there’s ever a good time, that is. But we cherished what little we had.”
Of course, Frodo knew that Thorin was dead. He’d read half the history books in Bilbo’s study, and the dwarf was not quite legend enough yet to exist only in untranslatable songs. Bilbo could see it on the boy’s face that he was trying to tread carefully with his words, and Bilbo’s heart swelled with love for him. For them both.
“And how did you feel about him right – right at the end?”
Bilbo breathed deeply. “I would have followed him anywhere,” he said, and his voice shook with the weight of the truth that had held him down for nearly fifty years. “I loved him with all my heart. No matter how it ended, I am grateful I got to know a little of that kind of love. Hence, the reason I’ve had no other. I don’t think another could compare.”
By now, Frodo was attuned to when the end of one of Bilbo’s stories had arrived. He curled his feet up underneath him and rested his hands on the arm of the chair, then his chin on top of that.
“I suppose it puts things a little into perspective,” he said quietly.
Bilbo reached out a hand and put it on Frodo’s shoulder. “Oh, don’t think I’m trying to diminish your pain, dear boy! I feel better for having told you, anyhow.”
Frodo nodded, but looked unconvinced. “I need to find someone like that,” he said, a steely look in his eye. “If they’re not willing to walk to the ends of the earth for me, then I don’t want them at all.”
Bilbo laughed fondly at his nephew. “Listen to you. I knew there was more Took in you than you act like there is.”
Frodo looked a little more at peace than he had when they came home. He leaned his head on the back of the couch, his cheek pressed comfortably into the woollen throw. Bilbo decided it was rather time to change the subject.
“We should invite Hamfast over next week,” he said decisively, “for dinner. To thank him for all the work he’s done this year. Perhaps he can bring Sam, too, since the boy did so much over the summer. How does that sound?”
A curious, warm look spread over Frodo’s face, then. He didn’t look so giddy as when he talked about Rufus or Merimas or any of the other boys he messed around with.
“Sam,” he said, blinking slowly as though he was remembering a half-forgotten dream. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”
“We’ll get a spiced ham ready. Some pickled onions too, I think. Perhaps a cold dinner will be nice before the New Year’s supper in Buckland.”
But Frodo, he noticed, was only half-listening. His eyes were drooping as he melted into the cushions. Bilbo got up and lifted him gently. He might have been a teen, but Bilbo knew Frodo secretly didn’t mind.
“Right, off to bed,” Bilbo said, keeping his voice low. “We’ve all the dried oranges to string up tomorrow, and my arms won’t manage it alone.”
“Mm,” Frodo murmured in agreement, though he was already as good as sleeping.
Once he’d put his nephew to bed and pulled the thick duvet around him tightly, Bilbo returned to his chair. He looked to his left and right, feeling for a second a little like he did the moment he returned from his adventure. Like something was hanging starkly open, and he had to give his head a shake and his eyes a rub to get himself back in the present.
There were still things he hadn’t told Frodo. Things that would likely stay inside him, folded up and hushed, to his grave. He didn’t tell him how many nights he yearned to have been able to return to Bag End with Thorin, and for him to be living here all these years later. He didn’t tell him how he still cried, still, when he heard a note that sounded like a dwarven song or when an acorn dropped at his feet. He didn’t tell him how he felt like he had made his home on the road and left it by Thorin’s side, and come back to an empty one.
To Bilbo, it was no matter. He had rebuilt a life for himself here. Gandalf had told Bilbo he wouldn’t be the same when he returned from his journey, and the old wizard was right. But Bilbo didn’t want to be the same. He was glad to carry this ache inside him. The one that motivated him, inspired him, kept him warm even now. It gave him something to look forward to when this part of his life was over.
Bilbo settled down in his chair, committing himself to another hour by the fire before he turned in too. For now, he still had a little bit of life to go.
“Sam,” he muttered idly, and chuckled to himself. Now, there’s a boy he’d be happy to see on his Frodo’s arm.