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If anyone had bothered to ask Bilbo his opinion about their current situation, they'd have heard curses blue enough to put old Maggot to shame. As it was, everyone already knew how Bilbo felt.
He'd told them before they left: "I shall come along to see the ruins, but I am not sleeping on the ground again. I've had quite enough of that." One member of their party, someone who now suffered the icy cold shoulder of the Consort Under the Mountain, had assured him they would be finished with the survey in time to return to the Mountain.
Dwarf and Man (and especially Fili Durinson) avoided the Hobbit's eyes as they settled down to sleep in the ruined courtyard of what was once a great house of Dale. That is, all but one Dwarf, who hovered close at Bilbo's shoulder, tugged to and fro by his grip on his cloak.
"Burglar," said Thorin Oakenshield. "What are you looking for?"
His husband was searching the stone floor of the courtyard, shuffling around the perimeter with his eyes down.
"I am looking for the dustiest spot," he said. His voice was high and cross. Thorin smiled at the top of his head.
"And why are you looking for the dustiest spot?"
Bilbo huffed and turned around, one hand still buried in Thorin's mantle.
"Must you question me?" he said, and then, "If the stones are dustier in one place than another, it follows that the wind must be milder there." He did not say This is very simple, do keep up, but Thorin understood it, anyway.
"The wind? You are cold?"
"Not as yet-- but if I'm to sleep on a slab of rock, I daresay I will be."
Thorin looked around as Bilbo led them. He pointed to a nearly enclosed area between two low walls.
"Look there," he murmured in the Hobbit's ear. He walked them both into the little square. "There will be no wind in this space. I have found shelter in spaces like it, and on much windier nights than this one."
Bilbo sniffed, scuffing his shoe against the stone. "It is fairly clean here."
"The better for my cloak."
The Hobbit narrowed his eyes. "If I freeze over like a leaf in winter, you will live to regret it, my King."
"You are ever compromising, my Hobbit." He was smirking at him in a way Bilbo found awfully charming.
He sighed and released Thorin's cloak.
They slept long and sound that night and in the morning, much refreshed, Bilbo let Fili hand him a sandwich and did not even glare at him.
