Work Text:
“Black. Silver. Black. Black. Black. Silver.”
The first thing that woke Thorin up was the quiet mumbling somewhere above him. Ever on and on, it was the same few words that he could make little sense of.
“Black. Black again. Hmm, this one is grey, I suppose. Not quite silver like the others yet. Black again. Black, silver, grey.”
The next thing he felt was the feather-light tug at his scalp as his hair was gently sorted through, every strand accounted for and played with in loving hands.
Ah. Bilbo was up before him, then.
Thorin smiled to himself and shuffled over slightly, keeping his eyes shut. There was a time where he wasn’t one for sleeping again when he was awake, but times as such — no, moments as such — were to be savoured with his eyes closed, his breathing slow and steady.
The sifting through his hair continued — he could feel them all the more better now that he was at the mercy of senses other than his sight — but the mumbling had stopped. For a while, the only sound that was heard was the light rustling of hair, peppered in between a lazy morning silence.
And then —
“Stop it, Thorin. I know you’re pretending to be asleep.” There was a slight smirk in Bilbo’s murmur, and Thorin turned to face him, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “Good morning, then,” he said raspily, welcoming a peck on the lips from the hobbit.
“I suppose you caught me, then,” Bilbo said, his hands still fiddling with Thorin’s hair.
“What? Playing with my hair?” Thorin smiled. “I rather like it, actually. It makes me feel like I am a cat. Now that you mention it, however,” he cocked his head, “what are you doing?”
“Ah, well — getting to know you, I suppose. Like we discussed.” His face grew pink as he peeked at Thorin through the curtain of hair that separated them.
Thorin’s laugh was curt — a short “ha!”, laced with amusement and surprise. “ I thought that pertained strictly to bedroom relations, my dear,” he said with a sly grin. Not that he objected to this at all, for the record.
Bilbo shrugged, his voice growing into a mumble, as it always did when he was getting shy. “Well, we didn’t say that exactly. Unless I’m mistaken, of course.”
“Hmm.” Thorin rolled over onto his back, pretending to recall the exchange of words that evening. It was etched in his mind, of course, as any argument of theirs ever was. It was all so circular — first Bilbo would ask him, pointedly, when he planned to return to Erebor after yet another raven crashed through the window of Bag End with a letter for him. Then Thorin would ask if Bilbo wanted him to leave, and Bilbo would scowl, because they both knew that all the ravens of the world could descend upon Bag End like an ill omen and still Bilbo would want Thorin by his side.
They both knew, if they did indeed return to the Lonely Mountain, that would raise questions — questions of courtship and marriage and all the things that they shied away from, every time it wormed its way into a conversation. Thus came the age old question, yelled over cold dinners and slammed tables: what are we?
That had driven Bilbo silent, and slowly he lowered himself in his chair, his head bent over his food. In the dim glow of the firelight Thorin could see that tears were threatening to spill over his eyes and into his half-eaten fish. He had scoffed then, swallowing the brief pang of pity in his throat, and stormed out of the house in a tempest of shame and rage. For months’ he had lived in Bag End, lived with Bilbo, slept with Bilbo, and spent all his days ignoring the summons of his very own kin. But still, still … there was no name for what they had. No direction for them to head in.
It was not the way they were made to be, to be stagnant, unchanging. No dwarf could stop a fire from growing in the forge, and no hobbit could stop a tree from setting its roots deep in the earth. But the more their affection grew, the more it scared Bilbo, for one step led to one another all too easily when it came to love, and it scared him how quickly it all changed. He begged Thorin for time. But Thorin was impatient, filled with the burning love of a dragon’s beating heart, possessive and proud. He was impatient to love Bilbo the way he was meant to be loved, in full reverence, in every way, every language he knew.
It was always the same fight, over and over again. Bilbo wanted to take time. Thorin couldn’t bear to give it.
Thorin’s thoughts had led him to his favourite spot: a quiet place by the base of The Hill, where he could sink his feet in the Brandywine River and let the cool water carry his troubles away. If he was bored of staring at the water running over his feet, he would look to the stars.
Stars, like water, moved with the night. As a child, Thorin was told stories of Durin King keeping patrol over the expanse of night while the dwarrow-children slept. From the dark horizons of the East his crown would rise, and as the night went on he would climb up the precipice of the sky. When he reached the top of his overlook, that marked midnight. Then he would traverse the descent from the heavens, into the West, and when morning broke and the stars retreated he would lie in water deep, until he was roused to duty once more.
Durin’s Crown was nearing the top of the sky when Thorin heard the crackle of a match behind him -- the first foreign sound in the hours he had been there. A pipe was lit and gently tucked into his hands, fragrant with the applewood of which it was made, and a good leaf of Old Toby filled within.
Bilbo’s eyes were swollen and damp, no doubt from a good deal of crying, as he sat next to Thorin, and by the tightness in his jaw Thorin could tell that he had forced himself to be there with him. All of a sudden Thorin was acutely aware of how miserable the hobbit was -- and how miserable, in turn, that made him. And with it came an immense longing to draw Bilbo close to him, to embrace him, comfort him, and pour out the apologies that had tangled themselves into a lump in his throat.
But instead he smoked on his pipe, taking care to note that Bilbo had filled it completely full with leaf -- a habit he refrained from himself for the sake of conservation. But he always did it for Thorin.
“Maybe…” Bilbo’s voice came out raspy, and he cleared his throat. “Maybe we’re going about this wrong. We keep expecting us to… be something. Do something. It’s much too complicated.”
“Mm.” Thorin hummed in agreement. His long sigh came in a threaded wisp of smoke from his lips, before diffusing into the night air, filling the space between them with fragrant pipe-leaf.
“You know… my mama always said, when things get too much, it couldn’t hurt to go back to basics.” Bilbo looked up at Thorin. “So how about we say, to hell with courtships and marriages and any of those strange little measures that come with love. How about... we get to know each other first. Inside and out. Quirks and all.”
Thorin froze. For all his life love had come hand in hand with a myriad of traditions -- there were things to prepare, rituals to undertake, when two people decided to undergo a courtship. It was the best way he knew of showing his commitment -- by having a map, a plan, and sticking to it. If his determination, in this regard, did not fail, neither then would his love.
But Thorin’s life had taken many turns, many of them running off the path he thought he would tread. One had led him away from the Blue Mountains to slay a dragon. And another had led him out from the mines altogether, far over the Misty Mountains, and into a hole in the ground, where lived a hobbit. For all the changes in his life, Thorin had weathered them all, and had grown wiser because of it.
So it was not impossible.
Thus Thorin’s face softened at Bilbo’s words, in understanding, in agreement. “I would like that.”
And at that Bilbo reached up to kiss the dwarf -- the long, drawn-out kind, filled with desperate, fervent longing, as if a few hours apart was as though a lifetime and then some. He held onto Thorin’s face with both hands, anchoring himself by his beard, and as if by instinct Thorin wrapped his arms around him, holding onto him, pulling him closer, nearer. Between the two came a soundless exchange of words, precipitated only by their frenzied breaths: I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry.
Stay.
“Let’s go home,” Bilbo murmured when they finally broke apart. “I miss you.”
“Yes.” Thorin laced Bilbo’s hand into his. “Let’s go home.”
-
The rest, of course, was history.
They made up as they always did -- with relentless, delirious fucking, equal parts scandalous and tender, tearful and reverent. Then they would fall asleep, satiated and very much in love, in each other’s arms. And that led to the morning, when all was forgiven and new once more, when Thorin caught Bilbo playing with his hair. Getting to know him, as he put it.
“I could spend a lifetime counting your hair and never get it right.” Bilbo lamented later, when he had given up on the counting, and instead turned to brushing through his scraggly mane with a bristle brush. “But well. I suppose that’s because we keep changing, don’t we? Everything about us.”
“Perhaps not everything,” Thorin said softly, reaching over to catch Bilbo’s hand. Light like a butterfly, he pressed a kiss onto his hand.
Thorin knew that Bilbo knew what it was that he referred to -- even if it remained nameless for the rest of their lives. Even if it was captured in grey; never quite black, never truly silver.
But the hobbit hummed, and with it came the typical words of an elf -- infuriatingly, wisely, never here nor there.
“Let’s see,” he said airily as his hands began to twist Thorin’s hair into a loose braid.
“Let’s see,” Thorin agreed.