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Everybody knows Bilbo Baggins returned from his strange adventure with enough gold to fill a several rooms in Bag End (and that’s probably with a few piles left spilling over into the hallway). No one has actually seen it, no one has even visited Bilbo since he came back but they’re all quite sure. After all, dwarves love gold and it was a known fact that Bilbo had come back with one of them, too.
For several months the whole of the Shire gives Bilbo a wide berth because of his strange new guest, or friend, or husband depending on who you asked. (Did a hobbit that got married outside the Shire count as married? It was a subject of debate many a night at the Green Dragon.) For several months Bilbo enjoys the lack of visitors immensely. He might have had the opportunity to get used to it, except of course Bilbo was closely related to Tooks.
Now if he’d had only Proudfoots and Bolgers in his family tree Bilbo might have managed to spend the rest of his life without visitors. By the time a Proudfoot got over their misgivings they probably would have settled comfortably into the habit of not visiting Bag End, of not risking a conversation with Bilbo and his dwarven… companion. Not so with the Tooks.
One spring morning Ivyblossom Took fearlessly knocks on the green door of Bag End aiming to find out if everything she's heard about Bilbo Baggins of late is true. She is wearing her favorite yellow dress and a new hat. Her husband, Adriac, is a few steps away from her, smoking his pipe and pretending not to be at all interested in who would open the door. But they are both disappointed when the only face that appears on the other side of the door is Bilbo’s. He looks much like he did before he disappeared for a year on an adventure except he’s not wearing a jacket or even a weskit and it’s half past eleven in the morning.
Bilbo blinks at her a moment. “Hello Ivy. Adriac.”
Adriac puffs his pipe in greeting while Ivy cranes her neck ever so slightly to see if anyone is behind Bilbo. “Bilbo Baggins, it’s been too long! A year if you believe it.”
“I do believe it, Ivy. Did you-”
“Adriac and I, when we realized how long it’d been since we talked to our cousin, our dear cousin, we were horrified! We decided right then and there to fix it and come to visit for tea. Now I know how you hate surprises, but-” she hefts a basket up, “we did bring cakes.”
Bilbo presses his lips together and looks stubborn. Ivy lifts her chin at him and wiggles the basket.
Bilbo sighs. “Come in, of course.”
Ivy looks back at Adriac with gleefully bared teeth. She’d told him. Adriac rolls his eyes and taps out the burning pipeweed from the bowl his pipe out onto the paving stones at his feet. His wife steps across the threshold like she’s storming a castle.
“I’d be lying, Bilbo, if I said that we’ve heard anything but tall tales and gossip about you and I always, always, tell them that I don’t believe a word of it.”
Adriac follows her and Bilbo gives him a tight smile before closing the door.
“And they always ask me,” Ivy continues, turning in a little circle to look down the hall and then into the study. “‘Well how do you know, Ivy?’ And it just kills me that I can’t say, ‘Because my own cousin Bilbo told me of course.’”
“I’m sure you haven’t heard very much that was true at all, Ivy. Can I take your hat?”
She nods and sets down the basket of cakes so that she can untie the ribbon, “Thank you, Bilbo.” She gives him the hat and while he’s hanging it up peers into every corner she can. She’s very put out to find them all empty, and turns back to her cousin. “I did think you- Bilbo, don’t you have a- a-”
“Thorin,” Bilbo says looking over her shoulder. “Please come and meet my cousins. This is Adriac and Ivyblossom Took.”
Ivy whips around and gasps in a happy sort of shock that isn’t at all polite. There is a dwarf, just coming into the study from another room. He’s everything Ivy heard he was: tall, grave, striking, and definitely, unmistakably really a dwarf.
“Oh, I’m so pleased to meet you, Thorin.” She lifts her hand with just a slight affectation. Thorin takes it lightly in his own, and his eyes are so very blue and somber that Ivy impulsively curtsies though she’s never been in the habit of doing so. “Is it all right if I call you Thorin? I did hear that you might be, well,” she leans forward conspiratorially, “nobility?”
“Ivy,” Bilbo says sharply as he passes her to head for the pantry and kitchen.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to be so direct, but I did hear that!” she calls after him.
“It was true at one time,” Thorin says, actually speaking to her. His has a deep voice and he does sound very, very regal. “But that is no longer the case. You may call me Thorin.”
Ivy takes in an excited breath, nobility. Real nobility, potentially disgraced nobility to boot, here in the Shire. Could anyone even imagine? Adriac speaks at last to no one in particular, just says “oh there she goes,” up to the ceiling.
“And you may call me Ivy,” she tells him, ignoring him. “Would you mind escorting to me to the sitting room?” She’s already taking his arm and calls over her shoulder as they begin to walk away, “Adriac, get the basket!”
Ivy, Adriac and Thorin are seated in four plush chairs (mismatched, Ivy notes) when Bilbo appears with his tea tray crowded with four cups, tea pot, cream, sugar, four plates, knives and forks, and linen napkins.
“I’m afraid we’d gotten unaccustomed to expecting guests,“ Bilbo says, setting tray down on the little table at the center of their circle. “You’ll excuse the state of the house, won’t you?”
“Oh I hadn’t noticed,” Ivy says. She had, of course. There were books and chests and little piles of curiosities everywhere. The corners were clean enough, no cobwebs or dust, but tidy it was not. She was disappointed not to see even one gold candlestick or goblet – let alone something more exciting like a ruby or sapphire – anywhere at all. “It’s just as I remembered it.”
Bilbo lifts his eyebrows at her lie and pours the tea.
“I’m just so pleased that we can get together, Bilbo. Oh I’ll get the cakes, you’ve got enough to do.” She takes the basket from Adriac and starts to unwrap them. “I didn’t know what Thorin might like, so I’ve brought seed cakes, honey cakes, lemon and apple.”
"I think the apple and seed cakes,” Bilbo says not looking at Thorin for confirmation.
“Wonderful,” Ivy says placing them onto the tray upon the linen they’d been wrapped in. Bilbo takes a knife and serves everyone a slice of each. He hands Thorin his cup of tea and doesn’t seem to realize that he rests his hand for a moment on Thorin’s forearm. Bilbo sits down with his own cup of tea takes a deep breath before lifting it to his lips.
Ivy takes a sip of her tea and doesn’t bother to savor it. She waits for as long as she can, but no one says anything. “So I heard you killed a dragon?”
Bilbo chokes on his tea.
Thorin – to everyone’s obvious surprise – laughs.
They are infuriatingly unforthcoming about the dragon, although Ivy does at least get them to acknowledge that there was a dragon and that it is dead. However neither of them will admit to being the cause of the beast’s death and nor will they supply any details about how one kills a dragon.
Eventually Ivy finds herself asking questions to two hobbits and a dwarf more intent on their cakes than answering her (or in the case of her husband at least agreeing with Ivy that he just had to know). With a sigh she agrees to follow their example for a little while. After all she didn’t go through the trouble of procuring the very finest cakes one could find in this part of the Shire to ignore them entirely.
Even so after a suitably long period of silence, she starts anew. “Thorin, please tell Adriac and I a little about your family. It seems fitting we should know a little about them all things considered.”
Thorin raises his eyes from his cup to look at Ivy before they drift down again. Ivy expected to see a light in them at the mention of family, or perhaps a flash of righteous indignation if they’d disowned him and that’s why he was no longer nobility. Instead, she’s struck by how far away and sad Thorin looks.
“Ivy,” Bilbo says, putting down his tea. “Did it occur to you that there are some topics of conversation not everyone can enjoy?”
“Whatever do you mean by that? I mean, everyone has family, oh-” she presses her lips together. No, that isn’t quite true, and perhaps it wasn’t for Thorin. “Oh, I am sorry.”
“It’s quite alright,” Thorin tells her and at least he seems to want to mean it.
Ivy feels like she accidentally stepped on his foot and he is pretending not to have noticed. “I hope you’ll understand that I’m just so curious about you. All these years we’ve assumed Bilbo would die a happy bachelor and now he’s married and we’re realizing we just lacked imagination.”
“Married?” Thorin asks her, looking surprised. He says it at nearly the same time Bilbo issues another warning using only Ivy’s name.
Ivy glances between them, “Well of course you two are-”
Thorin looks at Bilbo who tries to shake his head at him both minutely and emphatically. “No, I’m afraid we’re not married.”
“Oh dear,” Bilbo says, pressing his hand to his forehead. “Thorin, you really don’t know what you’ve just done.”
“Not married?” Ivy says. She glances at Adriac who does not look at her or at anything but the cake sitting on his plate. “But-”
“It’s really none of your-” Bilbo starts to say, but Thorin smoothly speaks over him.
“At the end of our quest I was very badly injured. It took me a long time to heal. And once I was stronger there were those that we would have wanted there that could not be.” Family members, Ivy realizes after a moment of thought. Family members that must have been recently lost. When she puts her hand over her heart, it’s a very sincere gesture. “When we talked about what we’d like to do we realized all we wanted was some peace and quiet.”
“Exactly,” Bilbo says, grabbing a second helping of apple cake.
He cuts a corner off with the side of his fork, but Ivy’s already leaning forward. An idea has just struck her. “Oh but you’re both here now, and you’re doing much better.”
Bilbo doesn’t pay her any attention, lifting the cake to his mouth without acknowledging her. “You can have a wedding here in the Shire," Ivy continues. "I can help. No, I’ll do everything!”
Bilbo immediately returns his fork to his plate, it hits with a testy little clink. “Absolutely not.”
“No, no! It’s no trouble. I want to.” Ivy sits up straighter and squares her shoulders. “I’m going to.”
“Ivy so help me,” Bilbo says. “If you throw us a wedding without our consent the next maypole I dance around will be the one I set up after your funeral.” He levels a very serious serious stare at her.
“Oh,” she says, sitting back in her chair with a pout. “But don’t you want to be married?”
Bilbo tosses his hands up, “Ivy, you’re very dear but there really are limits to-”
Again Thorin interrupts. “It’s very difficult to explain, but the vows we made to each other before I left my kingdom left us feeling there was not much more to say.”
“Kingdom?” Ivy repeats. “You left a kingdom? Your kingdom?”
Thorin nods.
“For Bilbo Baggins?”
Bilbo rolls his eyes, “Yes, thank you for that, Ivy.” He picks up the morsel of cake on his fork again with an unhappy look and eats it while frowning.
“No, no, that’s just-” Ivy shakes her head. “That’s so romantic. Adriac, isn’t that just the most romantic thing you ever heard?”
Adriac looked up, glancing at both Bilbo and Thorin for some clue to the content of the conversation that neither could give. He fell back on habit, “Yes, yes. Very nice, dear.”
For a moment Ivy contemplates the very idea that a king, a real king, would give up his kingdom for love. She’s never heard a fairy story like that, not in all her years. The stories she was told always ended with royalty made whole. It’s really very marvelous, and her opinion of Thorin is growing higher and higher with everything he says. She simply has to get Thorin and Bilbo to come Tuckborough, especially when Elliana would just die if she saw a dwarf at the dinner table.
“You must let me throw you a party at least,” she says, hopeful. “Come to Tuckborough. You must meet the family.”
“No,” Bilbo says. This time he makes sure to shake his head at Thorin, too. “No travel.”
“It’ll be some months yet, I think,” Thorin says diplomatically. “Before we tire of peace and quiet.”
Ivy sighs. “Very well, but if you change your minds you have to swear to me that you’ll come to me first.”
“We won’t,” Bilbo promises. “But if we do, we will.”
Ivy decides not to press. She’ll save her wiles for Yuletide when all of Bilbo’s arguments will likely be much weaker. By then, perhaps they’ll realize what good a wedding would do them. She smiles and sips her tea, Ivy loves a Yuletide wedding.
Another thought strikes her. “Well, I suppose Thorin you’ll want to know everything about Bilbo when he was a child then.”
“No,” Bilbo raises a finger, “No, he does not.” He turns immediately to her husband, “Adriac, please tell us about the harvest this year.”
Adriac raises his eyebrows, “Oh well-”
“Actually,” Thorin says, nodding at Adriac to beg pardon for the interruption. “I’d love to hear about Bilbo when he was a child.”
Bilbo sighs, and Thorin tips his head toward him with a very small smile.
Ivy beams at him. “You scoot your chair next to me then, dear. I’ll tell you everything.”
She and Adriac end up staying for luncheon. They (she) lingers so long over their plates speaking of Bilbo’s many relations that the clock strikes three and it only makes sense to have afternoon tea. There are, after all, lemon and honey cakes that went uneaten during elevensies.
At no point does Thorin offer up much information about himself, though Ivy tries her best to find out more about him. He’s from “very away indeed” apparently, but does not say from where. He has “quite a large family for dwarves” but he names no siblings or cousins.
“I’m afraid they’ve never strayed anywhere near the Shire so it’s doubtful you would know of them,” Thorin tells her when Ivy asks.
Ivy’s never spoken to a dwarf in her entire life but now she means certainly means to if she ever sees another band come through the South Farthing. She’s disappointed not to be able to name more relations by marriage when she does.
The most interesting thing he says is that he was only a king for a very short time. “So I’m afraid I don’t have many stories to tell of court.”
Ivy sighs, if only she had more time to tease out the mystery of Bilbo’s intriguing husband. But through the large window in the study the red evening sun is sliding down the sky toward the horizon. “I’m afraid we’re staying with my aunt, Sarah Bracegirdle, in Hobbiton. And while she may not have been expecting us for luncheon she is most definitely expecting us for dinner.”
“Oh now that’s a shame,” Bilbo says a bit too brightly. “And how long will you be staying with her?”
Ivy smiles, “Bilbo, it’s Aunt Sarah. We have an open invitation to stay as long as we like, of course.”
“Of course,” Bilbo agrees. He claps his hands on his knees as he stands up from his chair. “Let me walk you out.”
Thorin takes their leave in the study, picking up a taper as they step towards the door to start lighting the lamps and candles.
When Bilbo hands her hat in the foyer Ivy abruptly hugs him. “Oh Bilbo, I’m so happy for you,” she says, squeezing him tightly. At first Bilbo only pats her back lightly, then finally returns her embrace.
“Thank you for coming, Ivy. Shall I expect you tomorrow?”
She release him and nods, “For dinner. I’ll come early and bring something fine. Goose or a pork rump for roasting.”
Adriac harrumphs at the cost but doesn’t contradict her, stepping outside instead to light his pipe. “A goose,” Bilbo says, shocked. “Ivy, it isn’t yuletide.”
She pats his arm lightly, “Oh but you’ll want something nice to go with the cask of old vintage you’ll be opening.”
Bilbo snorts, more amused than offended that Ivy just volunteered something from his own stores for dinner. “Ah, yes that's true enough. Well my dear, be careful going back to Hobbiton.”
As she and Adriac make their way down the little path to the bottom of the hill, Ivy catches a light in the corner of her eye. She turns her head to see through the window Bilbo returning to Thorin. Thorin blows out the taper in his hand, the last candle lit. Bilbo is speaking, words she cannot hear through the glass, as he steps right up to Thorin and takes Thorin’s braces in his hands. He buries his face in in Thorin’s linen shirt while still shaking his head.
Ivy ought to look away but she can’t quite help herself. Her footsteps slow as one of Thorin’s large hands comes up to cup the back of Bilbo’s neck. Thorin speaks, just a few words, but whatever they are they are they make Bilbo lift his head again.
He looks up at Thorin for just a brief moment before he pushes himself up on his toes to place a gentle, fond kiss on Thorin’s lips. Ivy prudently looks away.
Adriac is just a few steps ahead of her, puffing his pipe and waiting patiently, as he always does. Ivy sighs happily and when she catches up with him, she takes his hand.
“Wasn’t it a wonderful day?”
Adriac's only response is to blow a little smoke ring into the evening air, but he does squeeze her hand.