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It is perhaps the seventh or eighth dwarven custom that finally drives Bilbo right around the fucking bend.
Let it be known that Bilbo Baggins is a gentlehobbit, and as is characteristic of gentlehobbits he has been taught to observe and accommodate the practices and observances of cultures foreign to hobbits. He’d make a terrible host otherwise, and he likes to think that hobbits are regarded most fondly for the boundless extent of their hospitality. And it isn’t as though he’s being unfair or biased — he can see the rationale in the first few conventions that had been presented to him shortly after joining up with the company. He knows, for instance, that dwarves dedicate a great deal of care and reverence to the state of their body hair, an easy inference from the intricate braids and accessories that adorn their heads and beards, not to mention the way they often loudly compare their stylings with each other. So it makes sense to him that he’d earned the scolding from Dori for helping him to pick a stray leaf out of his hair, and followed up with the necessary apologies for it as any gentlehobbit would under the wilting stares of the other dwarves. Gandalf was the only one who looked the least bit sympathetic, but one out of thirteen did not count for very much.
“Master Baggins,” Dori had rumbled. “Only a dwarf may touch his own hair, or another person to whom that dwarf has placed enough trust and affection in. Anything outside these conditions is a terrible affront to all dwarves regardless of ignorance or race.”
Bilbo looked down at his shuffling feet with his hands behind his back, a furious heat blossoming over his face as he mumbled sorry and made a mental promise to himself to exercise more care when interacting with them from then on.
It hadn’t helped a whit. Not an hour later, asking Thorin for help with gathering firewood had resulted in the king looking wholly thunderstruck at him, and Bilbo stood there uncomfortably, rooted to the spot without any idea of what to say or do before Fili and Kili dragged him away by his coattails to inform him that it was an insult for a person to make an open request to the king without standing in the witness of his peers. It was mainly for the purpose of posterity, they told him, and though Bilbo hadn’t any idea how he could have possibly known about that, he’d taken it upon himself to apologise to Thorin. To be sure that it was done properly, he’d even waited for the rest of the company to come back, during which he was painfully aware of Thorin’s gaze on him. Whether his look was one of anger or chastisement, Bilbo did not dare to find out which it was.
Far from ending there, the customs continue to pop up one at a time to be duly, unwittingly violated by Bilbo. Offering them food somehow equates to insinuating that the dwarf in question does not look strong or well-fed, even as Bombur accepts Bilbo’s last crust of bread anyway before telling him this. Passing comment on how a nice hot shower would benefit the entire company in general leads to Bofur whispering nervously in his ear that he may as well have said that they have a dismal sense of personal hygiene. At one of their rest points, Bilbo watches Thorin sharpening his axe with fascination, and is quickly treated to a ten-minute tirade on how incredibly rude it is to spy on a dwarf maintaining his weapon, an act just about as intimate as fondling the dwarf’s private parts.
The last straw, however, is when Bilbo finally approaches Balin, paper and quill in hand, to ask for a comprehensive list of common dwarven practices to be observed, and is told very apologetically that to do so is also against their traditions. Utterly bemused, Bilbo asks why this is so, the reply to which is a noncommittal shrug and the most unsatisfactory response, “It’s always been like that.”
“Well,” Bilbo says to himself hotly afterwards, his temper rising, “I suppose everything I’ll ever do will be against the traditions of dwarves one way or another! Goodness, if I were to make up a few of my own traditions, who is to say that they’ll be any less ridiculous from theirs!”
This gets him thinking deeply. On a whim, he sits down and starts to write out a list, deciding to conduct a little field-test of his own the next day.
“Master Bilbo!” A foot at his back prods him awake. “Get up, we’re due to leave shortly.”
Bilbo opens his eyes and squints sullenly, annoyed at being lifted from a most wonderful dream of being home in Bag End once again. It is dawn and the sky is still a murky shade of blue, the sun nowhere in sight. Grinding his teeth, Bilbo pushes himself back into his sleeping mat, squeezing his eyes shut in the hope of falling back into the dream he left behind.
The foot returns with annoying persistence. “Get up, get up,” Dwalin’s gruff voice drifts into his ear.
“Go’way,” Bilbo mutters, clutching the mat and keeping his eyes resolutely closed. If he has just five more minutes, he’ll manage to finish baking his seed-cakes, he’s sure of it.
“Master Bilbo,” Dwalin says, “I shall use any means necessary to make you get up as our king has ordered that we continue our journey at first light. Among dwarves there is nothing higher than the king’s word.”
“Yeah?” It is much too early in the morning to be dealing with this, so Bilbo casts about wildly and comes up with, “And among hobbits there is nothing higher than being allowed to wake up at your own time, so there!”
This makes Dwalin pause. His startlement is visible, even in the dim pre-morning light. “Is it really?”
Bilbo nods firmly, his hair making scratching noises on the mat. He wonders for a fleeting moment if Dwalin knows he’s lying, but the dwarf says in a humbled tone, “I…I am sorry, Master Bilbo. I was unaware of this.” Fear flickers across his face. “All this time, have we…?”
“Yes, you have,” Bilbo says sharply, thinking about being awakened via shaking, nagging, flying boots, and he finds a savage sense of vindication in how Dwalin flinches at his voice. “I did not want to be difficult, but I’m afraid that I cannot stand having such an important part of my culture trampled upon on a daily basis.” Despite his present annoyance, Bilbo bites back the desire to giggle at his words, feeling incredibly despicable for having come up with such a blatant lie on the spot.
Dwalin, however, appears to buy this fully. “My deepest apologies, Master Bilbo. I will inform the king and the rest on this matter. We shall all take note of this from now on; you have my word.”
“See that you do,” Bilbo says in as imperious a tone as he dares, settling back into a comfortable position to go back to sleep.
To his surprise and pleasure, when he awakens later to yellow sunlight and white clouds in the sky, Thorin addresses him at breakfast and apologises on behalf of all the dwarves there for their oversight regarding the nocturnal customs of hobbits. As Bilbo catches Gandalf’s eye, the twinkle in it sparks a short-lived fear in Bilbo that the wizard most assuredly knows better than the dwarves and just might tell them that they are being led by their noses. However, Gandalf lights his pipe and smiles with it between his lips, blowing smoke rings into the air and says nothing as Thorin asks Bilbo with unimaginable sincerity to forgive all of them there, swearing to make it up to him somehow, someday.
“Ignorance is no excuse on all our parts, Halfling,” Thorin says with his head bowed penitently. “We have committed a most grievous offence, and prostate ourselves before you to seek your forgiveness.” Behind him, the rest of the dwarves follow suit, lowering their heads.
Blown away, Bilbo just blinks. “Er,” he starts, glancing over at Gandalf, who is merely overlooking the proceedings with obvious amusement. “It wasn’t that bad, not really —”
“No excuse,” Thorin repeats stubbornly. “Tell us how the necessary recompense can be made, Bilbo. We are a respectful race, and where we are remiss in accord with other customs and practices, amends must be made.”
“It is a core tenet of dwarven culture to atone for such wrongdoings, Mister Bilbo,” Gandalf chips in sombrely from the sidelines, gesturing with his pipe. The wink is too quick and too surreptitious for any of them to catch save for Bilbo. “They will not be satisfied until you tell them the exact way about making proper restitution and they have carried it out.”
Catching on, Bilbo makes a display of contemplation, keeping a skeptical expression on his face. “We-ll,” he says slowly. “I guess you could do a few things for me…”
The circumstances of their travelling changes drastically over the next few days, most of the changes being very much in Bilbo’s favour. For one thing, most of Bilbo’s luggage ends up being split among the dwarves — his saddle bags go to Fili, his rucksack to Kili, and sometimes Bilbo even makes the other dwarves swap around their own luggages just for the heck of it. “Hobbits are very empathetic people,” Bilbo explains to them, improvising quickly. “It is customary for us to trade our burdens and loads with each other to have an idea of how it is for our peers to travel alongside us. This is how trust is built among hobbits and people from other races.” Perhaps it is the pent-up guilt at having trodden on the sacrosanct autonomy of hobbits being allowed to rise in the morning by their own accord, but none of the dwarves point out the fact that Bilbo isn’t doing a lot of carrying himself, and the masquerade continues without even the slightest instance of being foiled.
Some of it is downright silly, like how it is an old and established hobbit custom for their noses to be rubbed against each other when meeting for the first time every morning and right before going to sleep, which the dwarves dutifully carry out. Bilbo invests himself fully into this completely made-up practice where it comes to Thorin, even as the dwarf king blushes when their noses come into contact and he mumbles the time of the day-appropriate greeting.
A frankly ridiculous idea that Bilbo pushes just to test the waters one day is made when Thorin calls for a break at noon. Just before Thorin dismounts his pony at their rest point, Bilbo cries out, “Wait!”
Thorin wavers and manages to remain seated in his saddle with some difficulty. “What is it?”
“It’s just…it’s just,” Bilbo stutters, his mind in a scrambled fluster to piece together the poppycock of a brainwave he just had. “It’s just that…when hobbits are travelling and stop for a rest, before they do, the leader of the party has…to cluck like a chicken!”
Thorin’s eyes widen. “What?”
“It’s tradition,” Bilbo blurts in reply. “For hobbits of the Shire. It’s to celebrate its founder, who was an avid chicken farmer.”
The dwarves swap mystified, nervous looks between themselves. Thorin keeps looking at Bilbo as if the hobbit had just turned into a chicken himself. “You are…certain of this?” Thorin asks tightly.
“Absolutely.” Bilbo crosses his arms and nods curtly. “It is a grave insult to his memory if it is not done at every stop, and quite honestly I’m tired of not being able to commemorate poor ole’ Bopper Bumblebock!”
The company has fallen silent, the only noise coming from the slight wind in the trees and grass. Bilbo keeps his arms crossed and his lips in a pout, steeling his gaze as he maintains eye contact with Thorin. The dwarf opens his mouth, and Bilbo suddenly has a terrible hunch that Thorin is going to call him out right there, and he has the apology all lined up inside his mouth to offer preemptively before things can get ugly —
“Bwok bwok,” Thorin squawks awkwardly, his face turning red. “Bwok. Bwok.”
Stunned, Bilbo barely keeps his jaw from dropping. He sits in his saddle with just the sole realisation that Thorin is actually clucking at him, and nothing else seems to matter at that singular moment in time. On his horse, Gandalf rubs his nose on the back of his sleeve, conveniently hiding the shape of his mouth. Underneath it all, the desire to laugh hysterically contorts into a writhing mass in Bilbo’s abdomen, suppressed only when he bites the inside of his cheek and clenches his teeth together.
“There,” Thorin mumbles when he has clucked a couple more times, turning his face away from the rest of them. He clears his throat and shakes his head. “Half an hour, and then we will resume our journey as planned. Do not wander off unnecessarily; stick close, and should you need to break away, move in pairs. Is this understood?”
There is a low, affirmative murmur as the dwarves’ eyes are all still trained intently on Thorin’s back. Even after they have dismounted, Bilbo stays in his saddle, shellshocked with utter disbelief at having gotten away with something which might just be infinitely harder to pull off than stealing from a dragon.
The lasting giddiness at having coerced Thorin to cluck for the entire company is all that Bilbo is caught up for the rest of the day, at which point Bilbo starts to perhaps go a bit overboard with his growing farce of hobbit traditions. “Good heavens!” he exclaims at one of their dinners. “No, no, no! Any food scooped up with a spoon cannot be allowed to slop back down — that’s very, very rude when done in the presence of hobbits.”
“Indeed,” Gandalf adds, almost lazily.
Looking mollified, Gloin and Nori stammer out their apologies and go back to prodding at their gruel moodily, which Bilbo cheerfully informs them is also bad form, after which a few of the dwarves end up losing their appetites entirely.
When they are riding in single file: “Oh, Bofur!” Bilbo coos sweetly. “When you ride in front of a hobbit, a hat should not be worn. It signifies that the person thinks himself higher than the hobbit, and I know that is most definitely not your intention, seeing as you are such a humble, well-mannered dwarf.”
Yet another profuse apology, and the hat is duly removed.
Bilbo’s absolute favourite, however, has to be when he convinces Thorin that hobbits are esteemed greatly when allowed to share the steed of the leader. It isn’t long before he is seated behind Thorin with his arms wrapped tightly around Thorin’s waist, leaning affectionately against the dwarf and smiling into his hair. That Thorin flushes madly when Bilbo tells him that allowing himself to be hugged is a sign of courtship makes the untruth even more delectable.
Bilbo’s conscience only begins to nag at him when, far from challenging any of his absurd constructs, the dwarves lap it up unquestioningly. Worse still, he notices a stark change in their behaviours over time. Right after the clucking gambit, the dwarves slowly start riding at a distance from him, with the space widening at a steady rate. They speak with him markedly less, and avert their gazes whenever they happen to look at Bilbo. It shouldn’t mean anything, but the fact that they take after Thorin in referring to him as ‘Halfling’ gives Bilbo considerable cause for worry that he might have gone too far with the ruse, and he ponders over ending it for good, the only thing standing in his way being not knowing how Thorin will react to his confession once it is made. Surely Thorin and the rest would have nothing against a bit of harmless fun, wouldn’t they? Unless, of course, it is contrary to the culture of dwarves to lie pathologically over an extended period of time, of which Bilbo is more than guilty of.
Still, while aware that this cannot go on, Bilbo bides his time, spins even more asininity, and waits.
“— and there is nothing more important to hobbits than nose hygiene,” Bilbo tells Thorin, holding a cloth against the dwarf’s face as Thorin blows his nose explosively.
With a thread of mucus still linking his nose and the cloth, Thorin narrows his gaze at Bilbo. “I thought you said that was waking up whenever you felt like it.”
The grin slides away from Bilbo’s face. “Uh.” His brain has stopped working, of all times. “Well. That. You see…”
“Bilbo,” Thorin interrupts. There is no questioning the look in his eyes. “These customs — are any of them true?”
Bilbo hangs his head, ashamed. “No,” he squeaks, past all pretense. “P — please, Thorin. It’s just…I was —”
“It is a dreadful thing to lie, Bilbo,” Thorin says coldly. “What more about your own people.”
Bilbo has nothing to say in his defence. He keeps his gaze at his feet and wills himself not to cry, blinking his tears away.
Thorin’s hand, warm on his shoulder. Astonished, Bilbo looks up, into soft, blue eyes. Initially a severe line, the corner of the dwarf’s mouth crooks up into a small smile. “A chicken, Bilbo? Really?”
“I couldn’t think of anything else,” Bilbo gasps in measureless relief. “You — you’re not angry at me?”
Thorin seems to think about this, then shakes his head. “Dwarves are taught to appreciate a good prank, and this was an excellent one.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Bilbo giggles.
Patting Bilbo’s shoulder, Thorin leans closer and whispers in his ear, “And it is custom to pay back in kind.” With a mysterious smile, he leaves Bilbo standing there, cloth in hand and with no expression whatsoever on his face.
“Wait!” Bilbo shouts after him. “What did you mean by ‘pay back in kind’?”
Thorin just keeps on walking.