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"Bilbo..."
Bilbo stirs but doesn't open his eyes, instead electing to burrow back into his nest of blankets. It's too early to be getting up, and he hadn't made any plans besides meeting up with the others for a late brunch.
"Bilbo get out of bed."
Bilbo kicks out at the blankets.
"I don't want to wake up," he grumbles, pushing his face further into the pillow. It was far too early for Bofur to be waking him.
"You don't have to wake up, just get out of bed."
Bilbo braces himself and peeks out from his pillow and toward window, not sure whether it's a relief or a bother that the sun isn't even up yet. Even so, he hopes a scowl will help get his point across. But when he turns his head, it's not Bofur's face that greets him, or Bombur's, or even Bifur's.
"Who the hell are you?" he asks.
Were it not so late, he supposes that he would be more alarmed... But perhaps he should be alarmed because it was so late. He would figure it out in the morning.
The man kneeling at the side of his bed only smiles. It's a friendly thing, and Bilbo can't pinpoint from exactly where, but the smile feels familiar. Had Bofur mentioned another relative coming to visit?
"My name is Frerin," the man says. Bilbo tries to decide whether Frerin could possibly be that common of a name. "My siblings must have told you about me by now... You've met everyone else."
Bilbo considers the man's face. He certainly had heard Thorin talk about his late brother, and the man in front of him does strike a resemblance to both of the Durin siblings now that he has the idea in his head. It doesn't matter though. There's not a chance he's being told the truth.
"Nice try," Bilbo grouses, "but you're about a decade late to try an impersonation. Thorin's brother is dead."
The smile on the man's face lessens, but it fades into equal parts of vaguely amused and patronizing as he lifts his arms and wiggles his fingers. "WooOoOooo," the man warbles.
Bilbo can't quite decide what it is he's meant to think at that. He's largely decided that it's some sort of ill-conceived prank, but it doesn't feel quite right. Another conclusion worms its way in.
"A ghost," he murmurs, mostly to himself. Just to test out the idea. He’s not in the least bit scared, but even as he says it, he feels a certainty that it's true. "Shouldn't you be haunting your siblings' house?"
"Oh I do," Frerin says with a sort of casual reassurance and dismissal that seems completely unbefitting of an ephemeral being. Shouldn't there be a few more chains rattling? Perhaps a flash of lightning or two?
"What are you doing here, then?"
Frerin's eyebrows tick upward. "Do my siblings really never talk about me?"
"Of course they do, all the time," Bilbo says shaking his head, "but you've got to know this isn't your house-"
"Of course it's not. Bofur was my best friend growing up," Frerin interrupts. “Haven’t you ever wondered how our families met?"
"Well yes, but-"
"But that's not why I'm here tonight," Frerin interrupts again. "And we need to get a move on if we're going to keep to our schedule."
Frerin heads off, walking with purpose to and then through the solid oak door. Bilbo finds himself wondering dazedly if Frerin even needs to be moving his feet as if he's really walking, when Frerin sticks his head back through the door.
"Are you coming?" he asks. "I've brought someone to see you that I don't think you'll want to keep waiting."
Bilbo breaks his gaze, shaking his head and scanning the carpeted floor for his robe.
"Schedule," he grumbles to himself, trying to figure it all out. "In the middle of the night." He climbs out of the bed, pulling aside the blankets to try and find it. Where had his robe gone?
"You won't be needing that," Frerin tells him, but Bilbo is hardly about to walk around the house without it. Decembers may be balmy in New Zealand, but he’d gone so long without staying in a regular bed - a dressing robe was a luxury he wasn’t about to give up just because a hallucination of one of his friends' dead brothers told him to.
"I'll just be a minute," Bilbo tells him, but that only sends Frerin huffing back into the room.
"You're not even really awake," he complains, "you wouldn't feel anything even if I found a snowdrift to dump you in."
"I hope you won't do that," Bilbo tells him, sighing in relief when he finally pulls his robe from between the bed and the nightstand. "I've never liked the cold, not since my parents left."
"All the more reason to get a move on," Frerin tells him. "Trust me, you'll like this."
When he shuffles out of the guest bedroom, Bilbo sees Frerin waiting down the hall and follows him down the curved staircase. At the bottom lies the entrance to their kitchen, beautiful wood features and intricate stone floors. They were craftsmen, all three of them, and all of their skill had gone into making their home.
As his feet take the final step down though, they're cushioned by carpet, and the sight that greets him isn't a dark household left sleeping, but the softly lit living room of his parents' single level home. There's his father's chair and his mother's prized antique bookcase; the fire is crackling, and out the window is the glow of twinkling holiday lights over softly falling snow. It's his home, just as he remembers it... Except that it should be over 18,000 kilometers away.
Bilbo looks behind himself and is met with cream colored drywall, no sign of the staircase or supposed ghost to be found. But he's not alone in the room, and he turns around again with a sort of calm that he knows will feel out of place come morning.
"Mother?" he asks.
Belladonna looks up from her book by the fire, one of the old and worn novels they had both loved so much all those years ago.
"Oh hello, dear," she says, standing up from her chair, younger than she should be and so much more alive. "I'm so glad you could make it, I've missed you."
She wraps him up in a hug, one that is strong and on just this side of too tight, just as he remembers. He grasps her back, murmuring that he missed her too, content to be able to see her once more and vaguely pleased that he had gotten out of his bed for this.
"Now," she says, pulling back and holding Bilbo in front of her at arms' length, "you must tell me of your adventures," she tells him. He obliges and they sit in their armchairs by the fire, Bilbo telling her of his trip with Gandalf and the Urs from England to New Zealand and all the people and places in between.
He tells her about how they had come across a Traveler's Library in Tripoli and then seen great statues and pyramids in Egypt. Bilbo tells her about traveling through Somalia and the friends he'd made in Elrond and his daughter Arwen. He tells her of Pakistan and Nepal and Thailand and the people they'd met there. He speaks of meeting a towering rancher in Australia and how he'd nearly been detained in Tasmania because of some years-old dispute between one of the ministers and their leader's grandfather.
Bilbo tells his mother of meeting the Ris and the Urs and the Durins, and especially of meeting Thorin. He tells her about how it is all set to end soon, how he'll be home for the holidays.
"You sound quite determined to return home," she tells him, and he can't tell quite what it is her expression is telling him.
"Of course I am," Bilbo assures her, because she shouldn't doubt that he would return to care for Bag End. "I've got a plane ticket home in just a few days-"
"You do know your father and I will be with you always?" she asks, and Bilbo swallows around nothing. "Wherever it is you go, we will always follow. We won't be stuck in that house."
"Of course I know," Bilbo says. "But all of our things, our house," he says, gesturing at the room around them.
"I do love this house, don't mistake me, but there's nothing in here that you couldn't take with you. You've always been such an adventurous spirit," she tells him, reaching across to run a thumb over the back of his hand. "I would hate to see you miss out on all that."
"But our friends," he protests, "and our cousins-" She smacks his hand, just hard enough to startle. "Ow!"
"Who is it that you're missing so much that you must see them again in the next three days?" she asks. Her face is stern now, impatient in the way it had always gotten when Bilbo was a faunt and had been caught fibbing.
"I- well what kind of question is that?"
Bilbo purses his lips, startled at himself and suddenly unsure if he should have spoken to his own mother in such a way. She only waits for him to answer the question though, the fire crackling beside them.
“Well, everyone,” he supposes. There wasn't a particular face or name that he needs to get back to, but that hardly means he doesn't miss anyone at all, and he tells her as much.
"No, it doesn't," his mother agrees. "But wouldn't you miss anyone here?”
When he thinks of the people he'd spent the past six months traveling and living with, he finds himself wanting to say the same: that he would miss everyone… But it’s not in the same way. Now it feels like an entirely different question. He wants to say 'everyone' again, it's on the tip of his tongue, but this time it's because he has so many different people that come to mind that it would take too long to say them all.
He takes a moment to digest this, but comes back with the same conclusion. "It's not as though I could never come to visit," he insists instead, only a bit mulishly.
She’s not impressed.
“And it’s not as though you could never come visit Bag End either.”
. o O o .
Bilbo wakes to a knock at his door and a voice calling his name, but it’s actually Bofur this time, letting him know it’s 9:30 and they’ll be late for brunch if they don’t leave soon. Bilbo gets up and gets ready and finds that he’s not nearly as tired as he’d thought he would be. He’d dreamed the night before, quite vividly in fact, and even once they arrive at the Durins’ estate it floats in front of his mind’s eye with more clarity than he would usually expect.
When he tells them about it over french toast and orange juice, about how he’d dreamed up a version of their brother in his head—
“Was he bothering you?” Thorin demands at the same time his sister asks, “Did he say anything about Thorin?”
“I-“ He looks between them, an incredulous expression no doubt glued to his face as he forced his mouth shut. It seems that he’d somehow missed that many of his new friends are... well, paranormal enthusiasts would certainly be one way to put it.
Bilbo blows a gust of air out through his teeth. “Frerin visits you often, then?”
“Any chance he gets,” Thorin glowers. “The arsehole gives me dreams all night if I’ve done something to annoy him.”
"He called you the same thing," Bilbo responds, and it's out of his mouth before he can stop it. He hadn't meant to support this, to play into it. He didn't want to be part of some... Some ghost hunting party, but the conversation carries on. Bilbo tries in the meantime to process all this, tries to mesh this rather large bit of information into the group of people that are sitting at the table around him. Perhaps there's something in the house. Some type of hallucinogenic mould... It is quite an old house after all.
Bilbo stuffs his mouth full of half an english muffin to keep from saying anything else before he's had a chance to fully process this, and listens idly as Dís tells a story about Frerin and a bowl of marshmallows.
“He usually doesn’t warm up to people so fast,” Bombur murmurs him from his seat beside Bilbo. There's a pleased smile on his face, and Bilbo really doesn't know what to make of it. “He must like you.”
“Or he-“ Dís suggests, but she cuts herself off. “Nevermind. Forget I said anything." She shakes her head. "I did promise. And of course he likes Bilbo, who wouldn't like Bilbo?”
“Forget you said what?” Bofur asks, a jaunty grin saying he knows exactly what Dís had been about to say.
"Whakarongo, kaua e pēnā," Bifur says.
Bofur begins bickering with his cousin in Māori as well, and Bilbo looks around the table to see if anyone else is as out of the loop as he is. He hopes that perhaps Oin will ask them to repeat themselves and Bilbo will be able to pick something else up, but no. There are only a few at the table who speak so fluently, but it seems that everyone else knows at least enough about what Dis had been talking about to fill in the gaps.
Wonderful.
"Frerin really didn't tell me much, if that helps," Bilbo interrupts. "He just woke me up and took me to see my mother."
"Your mother?" Dori asks. He sits across the table dipping his toast in a runny egg as if there weren't a full-blown argument going on down the table. "How thoughtful. Bombur was right, Frerin really doesn't get attached so quickly, you know-"
"Thoughtful my arse," Nori interrupts, pilfering a cooked tomato off his brother's plate. Dori only rolls his eyes. "He wants something," Nori insists, not looking at Bilbo, but at Bofur, where he's met with some amount of agreement. Nori and Bofur and Frerin had been close friends as children and all the way up until Frerin had died, Bilbo knew that. Bilbo didn't care to doubt their assessment, it wasn't as though he had a chance of knowing Frerin's mind better than them-
But no! This was superstitious nonsense! He'd had a dream and Bilbo found that he didn't actually mind as much as he probably should have whether his new friends believed in such a thing. But whether his friends thought so or not, there wasn’t really any such thing as ghosts.
"Frerin wouldn't have bothered if he didn't agree, though," Bofur finally answered.
Agree about what, Bilbo wouldn't let himself ask, and he carefully avoided Thorin's gaze. But the rest of the table accepted it without question, and the conversation moved on.
. o O o .
Frerin wakes him up again that night, has to practically drag him out of bed when he says they aren't visiting either of Bilbo's parents. Frerin pesters him to at least open his eyes, Frerin had dressed up for him!
"I'll see them tomorrow," Bilbo says into his pillow. “And my flight is tomorrow- I'm going to sleep."
“That’s exactly why you need to come-“
“The trip will take a day and a half, and this isn’t even real.”
There is a marked silence where Bilbo tries and fails to put this out of his mind and just slip back into sleep. Finally Frerin speaks.
”You won't cooperate?”
"No."
"Alright then," Frerin says.
There's no snap of fingers or whoosh of air, just Bilbo's bed disappearing from beneath him and nothing but hard tile to break his fall.
"Oof-" Bilbo grunts as he hits the floor, but when he pushes himself up, he doesn't feel any pain. Small mercies, he supposes.
"Maybe he'll come to visit next year," Dis says from across the room.
They're in the kitchen, the sounds of conversation and tiny pounding feet filtering their way in from the rest of the house. It’s light outside, the smell of warm gingerbread and melting pine candles permeating the air.
Thorin shakes his head. He looks solemn, much in the way that he usually does, but Bilbo had learned to read him past that expression. "If he wanted to then he would have stayed. You've heard him talk about his family; I've probably chased him off. Better to let him go."
“What about your trip next year, he’s never been to South America-“
“Are you talking about me?” Bilbo asks. He’s prepared for them to whip around, to ask when he’d gotten here, why he’d been eavesdropping, but they just keep talking. “Hello?” he asks. “Hello?"
“They can’t hear you.”
Bilbo feels his heart seize in his chest even as he knows that it’s only Frerin come to sneak up on him. Vengeful spirit, his mind supplies. He takes in the scene around him along with how Dis had asked if this was all to do with Thorin. Bilbo finds with very little effort what Frerin must be trying to do.
"You're trying to make me feel guilty for leaving," Bilbo accuses.
"I'm not," Frerin argues, but Bilbo finds that he's had enough.
"Am I just supposed to give in now, admit some- some sort of-" Bilbo flails his hands. "Well I'm not," he insists. "Something like that could never work- I'm from half way across the globe!"
Fíli and Kíli whiz through the room and Bilbo steps back, unsure if they would be able to run him over in the confines of a dream or whatever it is that he seems to be trapped in. They're each brandishing the play swords that Glóin had picked up for their presents in Indonesia.
“That's a nice touch,” Bilbo compliments with a sour punch of annoyance. “Where is it that you get these things? The little details? Do you follow people around or is this just bits of my memory pasted together to make me think it's all real?”
“I thought you had decided I don’t exist at all,” Frerin teases, "I can't make up scenes if I don't even exist to begin with." Bilbo opens his mouth to reply, though he finds he can’t quite choose what he wants to say.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t convince him to stay,” Dis continues. The expression on Thorin's face is almost unbearable to look at, and it makes him- it makes him angry at Frerin for making him watch this.
"What is it you're trying to do here?" Bilbo asks, but it's more of an accusation than anything else. "Conjuring up my mother and then putting on this show," he says, waving a hand in the direction of the other two Durins. "You act as though I would never- This whole thing! It's ridiculous and dishonest, and it's manipulative-"
"I can't argue against manipulative," Frerin allows, "but there's nothing dishonest in it. That really was your mother and this really is what will happen come Christmas Day if you decided to go home."
Bilbo fumes from his spot in the middle of the kitchen, watches Thorin's face clear as the boys make their way into the kitchen again as they ask about the possibility of cookies.
“Cookies?” he growls, crouching down and lumbering toward them.
The boys shriek and run after a couple of cursory hits with their swords before Thorin gives chase picking them up and pretending to eat their ears.
“Uncle Thorin!” Fíli squawks. The boys are both pushing him back, hitting half heartedly as they play, Kíli having dissolved completely into a giggling mess.
"It's not as though he'll never be happy again if you leave," Frerin admits. "But I'm afraid that it would stay with him- with the both of you- for the rest of your lives."
. o O o .
'Air New Zealand International Flight 872 Aukland to Los Angeles would like to invite those riding in first class to begin boarding. Be sure to have your boarding pass ready…'
“It’s not ten already?” Bilbo says. He stretches his arm forward expose his watch, but when he looks at it- yes it is. Less than half an hour before they’re set to take off. Bilbo rubs his hand against his chest, tries to smooth away the jittery nerves that have sat in his chest all morning. He'd had a rough night's sleep and a teary goodbye when Thorin and the others had dropped them off, but he'd made it here all the same. Only a little over a day left and he'd be back in his parents' old home and things would go back to normal. Then everything would be fine.
Gandalf sits, infuriatingly composed with an amused little smile on his face. “Having second thoughts?”
“Of course not,” Bilbo snaps. He opens his book again, but he only stares at the pages.
Bilbo’s dream from the night before had weighed on him since he woke up. He found himself wanting to stay, the morning of his flight out of the country of all times. Bilbo had found himself actually contemplating it, just for a moment, but he already had his ticket and he would feel terrible if he had to tell Gandalf that he wouldn't be making the trip with him after all.
And besides, he could always fly down for Christmas next year.
Bilbo placated himself with that thought as they waited for their section to be called. Fíli and Kíli and Ori would be a year older, true, but everyone else would be largely the same given only the course of a year. It would be like no time at all had passed, he was sure of it. Bilbo shouldn't feel bad about heading back to his own home for the holidays. It wasn't as if he'd made plans to stay with them over the holidays. Next year would do just fine.
Though... Next year was Otho and Lobelia's 10th anniversary, and he would never hear the end of it if he were to miss it. Perhaps the year after would be a better fit...
'Air New Zealand International Flight 872 Aukland to Los Angeles would now like to invite those riding in rows eight to sixteen to begin boarding. Be sure-'
"That would be us," Gandalf says.
Bilbo lumbers to his feet, gathering his things back into his bag and clutching his neck rest under his arm.
He would just get on the plane, have a few drinks and take a nap. The flight would be over before he knew it and he would call Thorin as soon as he lands.
Everything will be fine.
. o O o .
Bilbo comes to slowly, the dull roar and steady jostling of the plane keeping him from reaching any kind of restful sleep.
"Well hello there, sleepy head," Frerin greets.
Bilbo blinks against the light of the cabin. "How much longer do we have?"
"Eight more hours," Gandalf answers.
It takes him a moment, he can be forgiven for not being completely alert considering that apparently he's not actually awake. He pries his eyes open to look at Frerin.
"I had thought you would leave me alone once I'd left," Bilbo tells him.
"Just one more visit. Then you can forget all about me."
"I highly doubt I'll ever forget this," Bilbo grumbles.
He doesn't feel jittery anymore, but there is a certain amount of dread that has taken its place. Bilbo feels as though he's on the cusp of making an important decision- that it's only a matter of time now. "I take it this won't be a pleasant visit," he says, rubbing the last of the sleep out of his eyes. "Where will we be going this time?"
"I'm afraid the privilege is all mine," Gandalf says. "We'll be heading to Bag End, are you ready?"
"I don't have much of a choice, do I?"
Gandalf gets up and Bilbo follows. When the curtain separating them from first class reveals his front hallway instead of the front of the plane, he's not surprised.
"Is this going to take long?" Bilbo asks.
"You don't want to stay and stretch your legs?"
Bilbo stretches out his legs. It does feel nice. "Somehow I doubt this was all Frerin had in mind for this trip," he tells Gandalf.
"Mm."
Gandalf leads Bilbo toward the back of his house, to his father's old study. Things look largely the same, if perhaps more faded. The house itself has aged, a few walls have changed colors, a few pieces of furniture have been replaced. He recognizes a few additions on the shelves, a particular few that are still stored in his luggage back on the plane. The people in the study though- he doesn't recognize them.
"Who are they? Do I not live here anymore?"
Gandalf only gazes at him for a moment. He almost seems amused.
"The young one is your nephew Frodo," Gandalf answers. "You two become very close in a few years' time whether you end up here or there."
Bilbo looks at the younger man with a more discerning eye. He supposes he can see quite a bit of Primula in him, and then there's Drogo's bright eyes. "So that would make the older one..."
The older one, the one wearing a bright red vest and silvered grey curls- he sat in front of a giant stack of papers, all typed and stacked in tall, neat piles. Frodo is sitting across the desk scanning through it as the two chat.
"Two and a third meters?" Frodo asks. "How tall was he really?"
"Two and a third meters, and not an inch less!" Bilbo- the older one, answers. Bilbo- the younger one, knows exactly who they are talking about. It was Beorn, the rancher they had come across in Australia, the one they had stayed with for over a week before the final leg of their journey. He was a towering man- still is, he corrects himself- looming over everyone with a kindhearted grace that seemed completely out of place next to the stern face that kept the ranch running. Frodo laughs and continues reading. He clearly doesn't believe his uncle, but Bilbo watches as his own aged face sinks into thought. That expression doesn't seem to bode well for him. It's a few moments longer before the older version of himself speaks again, but when he does, Bilbo hangs on to every word.
"I had meant to return," he eventually murmurs. Frodo glances up from the page he'd been reading. "I suppose I will never see Beorn or any of the others that I met again. I've grown so very old."
Bilbo finds his breath coming in carefully steady lungfuls, purposefully keeps himself quiet as if it were possible for him to be overheard. He tries to remind himself that this is a dream no matter how concretely real it feels. He wants to ask Gandalf to take them back. He doesn't want to listen to this, but Bilbo can't tear himself away from it either. There's a desperate and terrible hope that he was just speaking of Beorn and Radagast and Elrond but not his friends in Aukland. How could he even think such a terrible thing? But he has to have gone back to see them at least once. Has to have at least met up with them when they passed through London again. Surely they would have passed through London at least once?
"We could still visit them," Frodo insists. "You're not too old. I would take you and it could be an adventure for the both of us. Maybe we could take some pictures for the book?"
The other version of himself doesn't even look up, just shakes his head. "They were such dear friends to me, and now all that I have of them are these words. They asked me to stay..." There's something strange about watching such plain regret play out on his own face. He can't help but feel it inside himself. "... Thorin asked me to stay."
"Thorin?" Frodo asks.
From across the room, Bilbo covers his mouth, tries to keep control over his breathing, though it's rapidly dissolving and becoming shaky and unsteady. He can't possibly have gone an entire lifetime without seeing all of his friends, could he? A lifetime without Bofur's bawdy songs? Tea and cake rusk with Óin and Balin and Dori? And the boys, he had to have called to at least see how they'd grown? And Thorin-- He was still so sure that there was something left between the two of them. He wasn't- He wasn't ready to let go of that- He couldn't.
"Take me back," he finally gets out, and he can hardly care that his voice is barely more than a croak. "Wake me up Gandalf, I have to go back!"
For a moment he thinks he sees himself back on the plane, the drab row of cramped airline seats in front of him and Frerin seated beside him. It fades though, and is replaced again with the vision of his future self grieving the life that Bilbo has almost managed to abandon. He can't spend any more time here, he has to get back.
"I need to get off the plane!"
. o O o .
Bilbo wakes up with a start, and finds that there are several people watching him with startled expressions. An attendant makes their way to his seat within the next few seconds and Bilbo realizes that he must have made quite a scene.
"I just realized something- in my dream, that is, I realized I have to go back to New Zealand-"
"Sir, we're flying over open ocean right now, you can't leave the plane-"
"Yes yes, of course I know that," Bilbo grouses. "I was asleep, I'm sorry, you can all go back to what you were doing."
Bilbo stares deliberately at the back of the seat in front of him until the attendant leaves and his neighbors go back to their own business. He starts thinking through the logistics of it- he wishes he weren't in the middle of a twelve hour flight in the opposite direction of where he wants to go, but that can't be helped now. It's only when he starts wondering about how much time he'll have to dedicate toward going through customs that he remembers one of the reasons why he'd told himself he couldn't go back in the first place.
"Gandalf-"
"It's no problem," Gandalf interrupts. It's soft, and there's no menace to it, only a soft amusement like he'd known exactly what was coming. "We'll get return tickets as soon as we've landed. The weather in New Zealand will be so much better for my old joints than in England, it's no trouble at all."
Bilbo sinks back into his seat, suddenly relieved. "Thank you."
It's still seven solid hours and a few odd minutes before they're able to get off the plane in Los Angeles, and Bilbo counts down every second of it. When they do land, they secure themselves tickets back to Aukland and settle in to wait. It's verging on Christmas Eve and Bilbo finds himself yet again in a country he's never visited before, but he can't even bring himself to look around the small area they're allowed before he has his phone out to call Thorin, international roaming charges be damned.
It's a quick call, just enough to tell Thorin that he's coming back, that he- that he needs a ride back and a place to stay... He still can't manage to get the words he so desperately wants to say out of his mouth, but he decides that they have to come when he arrives back. He can't put them off forever.
To get back on a plane for another twelve hours with nothing to really show for his time or money should be disheartening, but the only thing Bilbo feels from boarding to landing to the returning gate is anticipation. He's finally chasing something that he truly wants, and it is so close.
As they pass the outside of security and approach the check-in area, Bilbo starts scanning the crowd. He starts running when he spots Thorin, rumpled and tired and gorgeous in the last dregs of evening light. Bilbo drops his bag when he's almost there, just in time for Thorin to scoop him up into a hug. Thorin is finally right there under his hands after so many hours of waiting, and Bilbo isn't sure that there is room for any more happiness inside of him.
"You really came back," Thorin whispers into his neck.
Bilbo revels in the feeling of being caught up in Thorin's arms, thinks of how easy it would be to lean back just a little, finish the kiss that Thorin had offered all that time ago. But he's still... he still can't. He wants to so badly, but he can't bring himself to take the risk. Can't bring himself to expose his feelings so plainly and admit it, even just to Thorin. "Of course I came back, of course I did."
Thorin steps back first, keeps a hold on a shoulder and moves the other to cradle Bilbo's face. He leans into it. There's a smile, so warm and so fond on Thorin's face that Bilbo tells himself he has nothing to be scared of, he just needs to say it. Just tell Thorin how he feels. He knows what he wants, and all he has to do is ask.
"Thorin, I-" the words whither in his throat before he can get them out, but he can't stop now. "I wanted to tell you that I... I-"
Bilbo takes a few more breaths, hears the words swimming around in his head. I love you. I want to be with you. Please understand what I'm trying to say. But he can't catch hold of them long enough to force them out. He feels despair settling back into his chest, feels defeated by some unknown enemy inside his own head. His fists clench and his face falls. Bilbo is readying himself to give it up- admit that he won't get to have this because he can't bear to set the words out in the open- but Thorin's hand slides down his shoulder to wrap around Bilbo's. Encourages him to relax his fingers before Thorin tilts his face up with his other hand.
He at least wants Thorin to understand it. He deserves that much even if Bilbo can't get the words out.
"I want to say it," Bilbo says, and he knows it must sound like nonsense, all of it. "I want to, I just-"
Bilbo's words die again, and he thinks that if it were anything else that he needed to say- he could certainly write it in a letter? Bilbo knows he is skilled in words even if these particular ones are exempt. He's ruined the reunion he'd had in his head, but that didn't mean that the rest of it couldn't happen at all-
Thorin is smiling though. Bilbo's emotions are a swirling mess inside him, but Thorin only shakes his head.
"You came back to me," he says. Thorin looks at him, and Bilbo can't call his expression anything other than besotted. "You don't need to say anything else," Thorin says. "You came back to me.
Thorin's eyes drift down, and Bilbo's breath catches as he starts to move in. Is he...?
The kiss comes so fast even though Thorin is moving so slow, but when their lips meet... Oh. Bilbo's eyes fall shut. Oh, this is just what he'd wanted.
. o O o . Epilogue . o O o .
Frerin groaned and flung his head back as he fought back a stubborn sting in his eyes. He was happy for his brother; he'd pulled off his plan! But there was no way in hell he was about to cry over it. Frerin was glad for once that Nori and Bofur didn't have a chance of seeing him- But then again they had both grown older as much as he had. There were times when it was hard to tell how well he knew them anymore. Even so, Frerin can't imagine anything he wouldn't spare to give his brother a real hug in this moment.
This time of year was always bittersweet- It was as nostalgic for Frerin it as it was for anyone else, but he wasn't able to be part of the new memories more often than not. This year though...
He'd watched as Thorin got the call from Bilbo, bleary-eyed and so cautiously hopeful. He'd watched as Thorin drove to the airport to pick him up. Listened as he'd gently called for Frerin, as if he'd thought this all might be a dream. The stunned smile when Bilbo had actually been there- that this was really happening- had been gratifying enough, but Frerin felt as if he'd earned just a couple more minutes of basking in the success of it.
He wouldn't stay for long- he didn't want to accidentally witness anything too scarring (though knowing his brother, it wouldn't be anything past saccharine sweet kisses and smooshy pet names for quite a while)- but he hadn't seen his brother so unabashedly happy in such a long time.
And if he didn't know better, he would say that Thorin was looking right at him now. He feels shimmery and solid all at once, caught in his actions and just wondering-
"Thank you Frerin," he whispers, and Bilbo turns around to look. It's slow and relaxed, like it would be perfectly normal for him to turn and see Frerin there, but his eyes don't catch the way that Thorin's seem to. It's only a moment before his eyes are glued back to Thorin.
"Is he here?" Bilbo asks, something just barely over a whisper.
"I think so," Thorin answers. The twinkling lights lining the hall cast an ethereal glow, and Frerin lets himself pretend. The two of them are still caught up in an embrace, but Thorin turns to look toward Frerin again.
"Merry Christmas, Thorin. And to you too, Bilbo."
He'd like to see Dis beat that present.