Archive of Our Own ^beta

Day 1

It had been seven years since they had last made it out to the summer house.

Seven years, seven long years, and in that time, much had changed.

Some things, however, had not, Bilbo couldn’t help but think as he woke to an empty bed, the sheets still warm beside him from where Thorin had recently vacated them.

Languorously, content, he stretched out, his arms seeking that warmth out, for just a moment.

Thorin would be downstairs, as he always was first thing in the morning, already showered and dressed with the coffee machine switched on and slowly dripping a fresh brew into his mug (World’s Best Uncle! proclaimed in the bright red and shaky script of a then five-year-old nephew), staring out of the window at the bird feeder standing in the neat square of a city garden (perhaps a little wistfully, though he never would have admitted to it) as he waited for the kettle to boil so he could make Bilbo’s customary cup of morning oolong. Bilbo had no such sentimentality for mugs, not like Thorin, and used any that came to hand, but every morning, for the last ten years, Thorin had made Bilbo’s first tea of the day, and every morning, it had been in his pretty fine ceramic teacup, the one with the pattern of acorns and oak leaves, that was so thin he always came close to burning the tips of his fingers on the china.

Thorin would bring it upstairs to him, wake him gently if he wasn’t already awake, would press a kiss to his forehead and mutter his goodbye for the day, before dashing out the door to work, to be at his desk or on site at his construction company by eight sharp, leaving Bilbo to wake slowly in bed whilst his tea cooled enough to drink, maybe to doze off again. Thorin would be home by half past five, as he always was, but Bilbo wouldn’t return until gone eight in the evening. His shop – a homey bakery-cum-tearoom-cum-bookstore-cum-gallery, his pride and joy, handed down to him from his mother and father with a loyal customer base and a terrible set of books, which he had built back up from near closure by the tax office with the love and care that he had always showered over it, and probably always would.

Thorin would kiss him when he came home too, the bristles of his beard scratching Bilbo’s cheek gently, his arms a brief warmth around his shoulders. By that point in the evening they would maybe manage a quick dinner, an hour or two of telly, occasionally a soft and familiar bout of lovemaking, before falling soundly asleep, Bilbo always wrapped around Thorin’s back, as they had slept together every night for the last decade.

It was a lovely familiarity, one which gave them both the time they needed to conduct their own affairs and enjoy their own solitude, and allowed them too those gentle moments in the evening, time spent together that was enough at least to keep them happy, even if perhaps they were not close in the same way as they had once been when the blush of their honeymoon period and their youth kept them up late into the night talking, but that was inevitable in a relationship, that is what he had always known to be true.

Bilbo was happy.

His life made him happy.

Thorin made him happy.

“Bofur called,” Thorin said, quietly, as the gentle clink of china being set down against the bedside table stirred him from the near slumber he had fallen back into. This was not a part of their normal routine – Bofur, an old friend of both of theirs who lived out near their summer house and who kept an eye on it for them, rarely called, and if so, never first thing in the morning. In fact, he was barely in touch at all, but for the occasional cheery email informing them that the old house was ‘Still standing!’. An uneasy sense of dread settled in Bilbo’s chest as he stirred, forcing himself to sit up, folding his legs under the duvet to make room for Thorin, who sat down on the bed, idly rubbing at Bilbo’s calf through the sheets.

“What?” he asked, perhaps not the most eloquently, and Thorin quirked a small smile at him, before hitching himself further onto the bed. Definitely a deviation from routine, Bilbo couldn’t help but think, as Thorin settled down, as if he was not planning on moving for some time.

“There’s been a storm out west,” Thorin said, wincing a little as Bilbo pulled an expectant face. “It hit the summer house.”

Bilbo screwed up his eyes for a moment.

“How bad?”

Thorin didn’t answer. When Bilbo looked back at him, he was rubbing at the back of his head, his face all scrunched up, and Bilbo knew exactly what that expression meant, had seen it countless times before whenever things had gone badly and Thorin didn’t know how to tell Bilbo exactly how badly it had gone.

“Oh god,” Bilbo said, reaching for his tea. He rather thought he was going to need it.

“He’s sending pictures later today, so we can see the wreck and decide what to do.”

“Wreck?” Bilbo asked, incredulously, and Thorin nodded, pulling his legs up onto the bed, his knees bent and his cheek resting against the curve of them, looking almost like he did when he stared at the garden, that strange and slightly pensive look that Bilbo had never entirely understood.

“It’s been a very long time since we did this,” Thorin said, quietly, and Bilbo frowned.

“Did what?”

Thorin shrugged, glancing away.

“Sit in bed together, and talk,” he said, eventually, a little hesitant. Now it was Bilbo’s turn to quirk a smile, a soft and gentle thing, trying to convey in a way that he couldn’t ever quite manage with words that despite how busy their worlds were, he had never stopped loving Thorin, that he never would, that the foundations of their relationship were made of iron, that distance would never shake that.

“Well, perhaps,” Bilbo replied, in the end. “Though when we have done that in the past, it typically did not have anything to do with unexpected summer storms and what will no doubt prove to be a terribly expensive repair job.”

“Maybe not.”

Thorin reached for him then, in that slow and hesitant way that had not changed no matter how long they had been together, as if he still was not entirely sure what he had done to deserve Bilbo, and wasn’t entirely convinced that he wasn’t going to lose him somehow. And Bilbo pulled him close, his fingers tangling in Thorin’s hair as he lay down on the bed, suit and all (it must have been a meeting day, Bilbo thought idly, hoping that Thorin wasn’t missing anything important), and rested his head in Bilbo’s lap, his eyes closed but his brow still creased in a small frown.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, quietly, and Thorin reached for his hand, hooking their fingers together.

“I was thinking,” he said, slowly, “That, perhaps, it might be best to go out there ourselves.”

That took Bilbo by surprise, he had to admit: not the prospect of going to survey the damage, as that made rather a lot of sense, but rather how unsure Thorin had sounded at suggesting it.

“Well, we could drive out at the weekend,” he said, a little cautious. “I was due to work Saturday and Sunday morning but I suppose I could call around, get other people to cover the shifts-”

“I didn’t mean for just the weekend,” Thorin interrupted, his voice just a little louder than a whisper.

Bilbo rubbed at Thorin’s scalp with the tips of his fingers, gently, waiting for his reticent and often emotionally constipated partner to say what was obviously building up inside him.

“I miss you,” was what Thorin said, startling Bilbo just a little.

“We haven’t spent a night apart in over four years,” he replied, without thinking. “And even then, you were home by morning.”

Thorin shifted on the bed.

“Yes, but,” he replied, “it’s been very busy, recently.”

“It has,” Bilbo agreed.

“Seven years, since we’ve been out there last,” Thorin said next, his free hand clutching at the covers, twisting them between his fingers. His voice – it wasn’t pleading, because he hadn’t asked for anything, but there was something hopeful in it that made Bilbo quite convinced that something was coming that he wouldn’t expect.

“I have a lot of accrued leave, and you have been training Fili to take the reins in the shop for years now,” Thorin continued, and Bilbo nodded, suddenly realising where this was  all going and not really entirely sure if he was ready to hear it.

“That’s true.”

“We could go out there,” Thorin said, finally, rolling over just a little so that he was looking up at Bilbo, his eyes wide and perhaps almost a little afraid of Bilbo saying no, something that made his chest twist, just a little, at the sight of it. “Take some time out from work, from the city. Spend some time, just the two of us. Repair the house ourselves.”

And Bilbo agreed – how could he not, in the face of those hopeful eyes, when his lap was warm with the body of a man that he had missed, although perhaps he had not realised it until Thorin had said it out loud?

Besides, how bad could it be?

Day 5

The answer was bad.

Very bad.

“Is that a tree through my dormer windows?” Bilbo asked, aghast, from the front seat of their old range rover, pulled from the garage for the first time in months to take them out of the city, through the suburbs, across the mountains and to the gentle foothills to the west, to the small village nestled away in the crease of a valley. An idyllic place, one in which they had always found peace, with woodlands on one side and a burbling river on the other. It was Bilbo’s favourite place in the world, a spontaneous purchase early on in their relationship, when the two of them had had the time to come out here more often – every few months, in those early stages.

No, he realised, quite suddenly.

It wasn’t that they had had more time – it was that they had made more time.

“Um,” was Thorin’s rather eloquent reply. His hands were fists on his thighs: Bilbo’s were white from how hard he was clutching on to the steering wheel.

“Are those roof tiles on the patio?” came a voice, which Bilbo realised was his own. “And has loose masonry really destroyed my beautiful little porch that you built me for our five year anniversary?”

“Um,” said Thorin.

Okay, so Bofur had told them that the damage from the summer storm had been quite extensive, and yes, he had sent them pictures, but honestly neither of them had had time in the last few days to look at them around organising for their time away, packing, and closing up their house for an unknown length of time (and perhaps they had avoided it a little too, for fear that it would put them off from actually going). Neither of them had really expected the damage to be as extensive as it actually was: what Bofur had brushed off as minor storm damage proved to be quite terrible.

The house was a small grey-stone affair, two spacious rooms downstairs making up that portion, with a little porch at the front and conservatory at the side, both of which Thorin had built himself. The roof was gabled, allowing for two rooms on the second floor and a small attic room with charming sloping walls nestled at the top – or it had, once. A nearby tree (an old pine, which Bilbo had always enjoyed reading underneath) had been felled by some combination of winds and lightning, if the upturned roots and charred bark were any indication, and had fallen straight through the front wall of the house and the gabled roof.

“Oh dear,” Bilbo muttered to himself as they ducked through the partially destroyed porch to the front door, which was now hanging rather forlornly from its hinges. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

Whilst the downstairs seemed relatively intact but for some water and weather damage (although Bilbo rather suspected that on a closer inspection he would discover all manner of mildew and mire to ruin that belief), the upstairs was quite wrecked. Entire sections of the front wall would have to be repaired, the beautiful wallpaper that Bilbo had once lovingly chosen had been quite ruined, the floorboards warped and already mould had set in from the weather that had come whistling in, despite the tarpaulins that someone (Bilbo suspected Bofur) had tacked over the gaping holes. It was, all in all, quite a terrible state to find the place that he had once described as their love nest in, and if he had been a more fragile man, he might have wept at the sight of it-

“What the hell was that?”

Thorin’s voice, a little shrill, was accompanied by a flurry of flapping, and a rather loud expletive that made Bilbo quite glad that the nearest neighbours were far enough away that they couldn’t have overheard it.

“There are fucking birds in the fucking roof, Bilbo!”

Bilbo hid a smile, even though Thorin was in the next room, the one that they had called the writing room, back when Bilbo had hoped to one day write the novel that he had been planning for so many years, the one that to this day was no more than a notebook full of plans and doodles and scraps of dialogue, insubstantial and serving only to make Bilbo feel worse every time he looked at it. He had been sworn to secrecy some years ago about Thorin’s rather terrible fear of birds, and the desire to tease that had first accompanied the revelation had long since dissipated.

“We should check the conservatory,” he offered, giving Thorin an easy get out clause from having to investigate the said infestation. Thorin, clearly grateful, appeared quite quickly in the doorway, his hair (more silver than the streaked black it had been when first they met) even lighter with plaster dust that he had somehow acquired in his initial investigation.

The conservatory had been another gift from Thorin, like the front porch: built with his own hands, a warm and sunny little place for Bilbo to retreat from the world. Luckily, the glass and entirely survived the storm, but the door was now warped and refused to move, and a rather unpleasant smell had set in: the air felt damp and heavy, and Bilbo sighed, internally trying to calculate just how much work would need to be done to make this place, well, theirs again.

Still it hadn’t seemed so bad on first inspection, right until a paw had shot out from underneath one of the chairs (musty, mildew-y, how had they let it get in this state) and swiped a rather vicious set of claw marks across Thorin’s ankle, left bare by the rather trendy rolled up jeans that he was wearing.

“Fuck!” he screamed (he would later deny that it was a scream). “Bilbo, there is a fucking beast under the chair!”

Bilbo rolled his eyes, kneeling with a painful pop of his joints to peer into the dim gap beneath the old lounger. A pair of baleful yellow-green eyes stared back at him, obviously rather unimpressed at the intrusion.

“Oh calm down, you old drama queen. It’s just a cat.”

“How the hell did a cat get in here?” Thorin asked, as Bilbo took in the clues of the cat’s presence that he had strategically managed to ignore when first they had come in: claw marks on the upholstery, black and white fur well-settled in the chair that Bilbo knew well caught the best of the afternoon sunlight.

“I don’t know, but I rather think it has been here for a while. Come on, you old thing,” he said, and Thorin stared at him in confusion for a moment before he realised that Bilbo was talking to the cat, which slunk out from beneath the chair with the air of a royal who had been unfairly ousted from their residence by an inconvenient revolution.

It sniffed at Bilbo’s hand, once, before promptly turning its back on him and jumping up on the chair, a rather rattling meow indicating its displeasure at their presence.

Bilbo sighed.

Again.

He had a rather unpleasant feeling that he would be doing that a lot in the next few weeks.

“Well,” he said, standing up again and brushing the dirt from his knees (his worn old chinos were a lot less trendy that anything Thorin owned, but he loved them anyway). “To summarise: we have lost a wall, and several windows, and a porch, and have gained a cat, a flock of indeterminate birds, and rather a lot of mould. Does that sound about right to you?”

Thorin nodded, glumly.

“Let’s go see the garden. That can’t be anywhere near as bad.”

He was wrong.

Again.

He was beginning to dislike the sensation.

The orchard proved to have acquired a small flock of rather aggressive chickens, which Thorin stayed well away from. Several smaller trees had been felled in the storm, and now presented their upturned roots to the sky with some pride, wet mud occasionally falling from them in clumps. The great holes that they had left were half-full with water already stagnating, and a number of flies were seeming to enjoy the area. Spiders (God, he hated spiders) had colonised the shed, where his old gardening tools were rusting cheerily.

He had expected that his herb garden, which had once been his pride and joy, would be overgrown and probably half choked with weeds after all this time, and he was right. What he hadn’t expected was the small pony, standing in the middle of it, surrounded by its own droppings and chewing rather authoritatively on something that Bilbo rather suspected a horse shouldn’t eat. Although what did he know of their digestive systems? Maybe rosemary was good for them.

Its eyes were very large, and rather pretty, if you squinted.

“How did it get past the sheep grate?” Thorin asked, with wonder, and Bilbo shrugged. Right now he was willing to believe anything.

“Who the hell loses a horse?” Bilbo said, not quite in reply to Thorin, because he wasn’t quite ready to deal with the logistics of a pony that had somehow managed to get past either the grate or the eight-foot stone walls that bordered the property.

“We’ll find out who it belongs to,” Thorin said, with some conviction. “Come on, Minty, let’s get you away from Bilbo’s herb garden before he has an aneurism.”

The pony, of course, blithely ignored Thorin, but for defecating once more.

“Minty?” Bilbo heard himself asking, a little faintly, and Thorin indicated the sprig of what was definitely rosemary, not mint, still hanging from its mouth.

At least Thorin’s inability to tell one plant from the other hadn’t changed. If he had identified it correctly Bilbo might have been convinced that this whole thing was one long, terrible dream.

So, add to the list –

Birds in the roof
Walls on the floor
Windows in the garden
Mould on the walls
Cats in the conservatory
Chickens in the orchard
Trees on the lawn
Spiders in the shed
and a pony in the herb garden.

He could cope with this.

“Right,” Bilbo said, with more determination than he felt. “I’ll take the garden; you take the house?”

It might have felt worse, but Thorin took his hand in his, and to Bilbo’s surprise that made him feel quite a bit better.

Day 12

Of course, very little could be done without the approval of the local council. Internal renovations and repairs were fine, but anything that impacted the outside of the house and the appearance of the garden had to be passed through the local committee for the preservation of the traditional aesthetic of the village (ridiculous notion, Bilbo had always thought, until they had stepped in to stop that old coot Radagast from painting his guest house pink). That had left them sleeping in a tent in the ruins of the garden for several days until an official from said committee could be sent out to approve of their plans (and, presumably, to stop them from painting anything any garish colour).

Apparently this normally took at least a month to organise, but someone on the committee remembered his mother and was willing to push things along (although she had never lived here, so how that was possible Bilbo had no clue) - though he rather suspected that the rather vocal complaints from the neighbours about the uprooted trees ruining their views had made things quicker too.

Sleeping on the ground was not a pleasant experience, and he couldn’t say that he was particularly fond of Bofur’s old tent, speckled with stains and smelling rather potently of mothballs. He might have been in a worse mood if he hadn’t found himself waking up with Thorin for the last two days, rather than in an empty bed – although he still reserved the right to complain as loudly as he wished about the aches in his back. The time, however, had also allowed them to get a better understanding of the damage to the house, and how best to go about repairing it. Luckily, Thorin’s career in building left him rather suited to doing that, leaving Bilbo making round after round of tea in the (thankfully still functional kitchen) as he discussed his plans at length with Bofur and several of his friends, who had been roped in to help.

Thorin assured him that it was entirely normal to discover more problems before anything was done to fix those already known: as such, he was trying to feel rather positive about the pipes that were leaking, the wiring that had been destroyed and would need replacing entirely, and the rather malicious owl that seemed to have become fixated with their chimney, trying on what seemed like a daily basis to fly down it, dispensing old ash and soot throughout the living room.

(Nori seemed to find the last one particularly entertaining, if his lewd jokes pertaining to what Thorin would rather have in his chimney was any indication. Bilbo rather hoped there would be some form of revenge for that, at some point, though he wasn't holding his breath).

His positivity was being rather stretched, if he didn’t mind saying so, though he felt rather better about it when they also learned that the pony had a habit of sticking his head through the kitchen window and neighing loudly and without warning whenever Thorin – and Thorin exclusively - was doing the washing up.

Three tea-cups had been broken already.

He would have been more upset about that, if they weren’t the remnants of a very ugly set given to him by a rather unpleasant aunt.

The pony seemed to find it hilarious as well. Thorin did not, but Bilbo rather thought it was his own fault – he suspected that the pony just objected to being called Minty.

But all that aside, equipment had been borrowed (much of it had come from a rather dubious man called Nori with a grin like an old 90-watt bulb – blinding, flickering, entirely annoying - who refused to say where it had come from) and materials had been ordered and were, courtesy of Dwalin, being shipped over to them double time, due for arrival tomorrow morning.

All they were waiting for was the man from the committee, and though Bilbo didn’t cheer as an old but rather beautiful mini-cooper (painted a rather alarmingly bright silver-white) appeared up their long drive way, he came very close.

The good feelings dissipated entirely when Gandalf stepped out from within it.

Thorin must have noticed that his hands clenched into fists at the sight, and shot him a small frown, bumping Bilbo’s shoulder with his own.

“You alright?” he asked, but Bilbo did not deign to reply, instead choosing to stride very rapidly towards the approaching figure.

“What in the name of all that is good and green are you doing here, you degenerate old trouble maker?!” he yelled into the peaceful countryside, and from behind him, he could hear Thorin groan.

“Bilbo!” Gandalf said with delight, throwing his arms open. “It’s always wonderful to see you, m’boy!”

“It’s been twenty years!” Bilbo screeched, sounding rather like the owl that enjoyed their chimney so much (that hadn't been seen in a number of days, which was starting to make him suspicious). “Last time I saw you, you had just convinced my mother to invest her life savings into some half-baked business venture!”

Gandalf blinked, and then beamed.

“But it all paid off, did it not? I tripled her money!”

“It took you three years! She had to live with my cousin Lobelia, and that is not a fate worth having!”

Admittedly, perhaps Bilbo more bitter about the fact that Lobelia had stolen the silverware that Bilbo had always wanted, rather than the investment that had, admittedly, turned out very well in the end. Still, he was a Baggins through and through, and couldn’t help but feel that there was something rather improper about throwing your money haphazardly into any old venture. Unfortunately, Gandalf had not agreed, and if his grey velvet blazer and snazzy little cravat were any indication, he had not retired destitute as Bilbo had often hoped, but very wealthy.

“Now now,” Gandalf said, quite cheerily. “It all ended well, didn’t it? She got to retire to the Bahamas, and you used your share of the inheritance to buy this little place, didn’t you? And what a strange coincidence, I thought to myself, when I learned that dear old Belladonna’s son had settled in the same village as I! I will admit that I had hoped to catch you long before now, but it seems as though you haven’t been around all that much, something which I would have taken some personal offense to, if I hadn’t known that you had no clue that you held a personal acquaintance with one of your dear neighbours.”

Bilbo blinked, feeling wrong-footed, his anger deflated like a rather sad holiday balloon.

“How do you know what I used the money for?” he asked in the end, this being the first of the many questions battling in his mind that made it to his mouth.

Gandalf winked, and tapped his nose.

“Oh, I know everything that goes on around here, my lad. Now, let’s meet this charming lad of yours-” Gandalf must have glanced up the path then, for he blinked at the sight of Thorin, arms folded, glaring at the pair of them. “Ah, well, at least he’s good looking, I suppose. Onwards!”

It was only as he was walking away that Bilbo noticed that, along with the blazer and cravat, Gandalf was wearing what appeared to be a bright purple pair of pinstripe trousers, and wellington boots patterned with tiny pink birds.

It was very hard to hold in another screech.

Day 17

Luckily, Bilbo’s little yelling fit on the driveway had not seemed to offend Gandalf in any way, and he had approved all the plans that had been laid with a lackadaisical flick of his hand that had rather irritated Thorin. He had been worried that he wouldn’t, when Bilbo had started ranting, for although he always enjoyed Bilbo’s spitfire of a temper, he knew from quite a lengthy amount of experience that other people did not.

He still shuddered when he thought about estate agents.

He still didn’t understand how they had ended up finding a house.

At least with the committee appeased, they could begin with their work, and hopefully, Gandalf would not appear again to incite Bilbo’s rage nor to interfere with the project (though there was an unpleasant, niggling feeling in Thorin’s chest that made him think that this might be a fruitless wish). He had worked with Bofur before, when building the porch and the conservatory, and he was good at his work: though more of a carpenter by trade, he could put his hands to most things, a skill which proved very useful out here in the countryside, where it was difficult to convince many contractors to come to.

The rest of the team too were quick to follow orders and good at what they did: Nori was always able to acquire anything that they needed (Thorin knew better than to ask, unlike Bilbo), and seemed to have a sixth sense for where problems in the wiring were, which was rather lucky, because he had a habit of swinging his sledgehammer at walls without consulting the blueprints. Nori’s older brother, whilst not a part of the team, always seemed to send him to work with an excessive amount of food, as well, which put everyone in a much better mood. He had found an unexpected ally in Bofur’s brother, Bombur, who always seemed to know when something very loud and very bad was going to happen, and disappeared to lure Bilbo out to the kitchen to discuss the finer points of herb growing so that Bilbo was not around for the very-loud-very-bad thing, which made things much easier on Thorin’s blood pressure. He also found himself feeling deeply fond of them for removing what proved to be wood pigeons from the roof whilst he made himself very, very busy at the far end of the house.

Bifur didn’t say much, but pulled his weight, and proved very useful on the day it came to clearing the orchard.

Bilbo had been pottering around the garden since building work had started, making endless lists in his incomprehensible handwriting. He hadn’t done all that much on it but measure the tree trunks and try his best to shoo the pony from the garden (not happening), but it seemed that today had come the first stage in his plan. He had, to Thorin’s relief, not tried to enlist him in helping him clear the orchard of the demons-known-as-chickens, knowing better than to even ask, and had apparently attempted to carouse them out of the garden himself. The first Thorin knew of it was when Bilbo’s voice came, loud and distinct, from the bottom of the garden:

“Fuck the fucking lot of you! Thorin was right about you!”

Rather than feeling vindicated, Thorin had filled immediately with worry, and not because he didn’t believe Bilbo capable of looking after himself, but rather because he knew from first-hand experience just how vicious birds could be. And no, he didn’t mean that sarcastically. He still couldn’t look at geese without shuddering. Anything that flew and attacked him was not considered a friend in his little corner of the world.

He wasn’t sure a man in his fifties was meant to run as fast as he did down the garden, and he was probably supposed to be too dignified to shriek Bilbo’s name as he did, but since when had common sense stopped him from doing anything? Never, that’s when. He considered it to be one of his finest traits (and damn those who disagreed).

Bilbo was staring at him, rather bewildered, when Thorin finally made it to the orchard.

“Whatever is wrong with you?” he asked, as Thorin panted (it had probably been a decade since he had last run that fast, no judgement).

“The birds!” he yelled, a little incoherently, perhaps. “The birds!”

Bilbo blinked.

“The Alfred Hitchcock film?” he inquired, as Thorin fell on the floor as a stitch suddenly made itself known in his side.

“No, you moron,” he yelled from the ground, probably made less authoritative by the way he was rolling around in pain. “I thought the chickens had attacked you!”

“Thorin,” Bilbo said, in his very-careful voice that normally meant that Thorin was being an idiot. “There is only six of them. I’m not sure what damage you expected them to do to me.”

Thorin, a little recovered, pointed an accusing finger at Bilbo.

“Birds were sent by the devil to test us,” he wheezed. “Even six could take you down, and I don’t want to lose the love of my life to things that belong in the oven, lightly seasoned and stuffed. And why did you yell if they weren’t attacking you?!”

Bilbo, he could tell, was trying very hard not to laugh.

“One pecked me, that is all,” he said, as he reached for Thorin’s hands, helping him to his feet. “Look.”

There was, indeed, a very small scratch on his wrist.

“They seem to like the orchard,” Bilbo said, with a small frown. “I still can’t find anyone that is missing them, but I can’t help but feel that I shouldn’t be letting them rove around like this. After all, the foxes might get them, and I would feel awfully bad if I came down one morning and found a bunch of feathers instead of, oh I don’t know, Henrietta. Look at her!” he said, jabbing a finger at one small, feathery demon, who clucked at the attention. Or maybe she was summoning back up – Thorin couldn’t be sure.

“I just wanted to try and get them into that box,” he continued, waving his hand in the direction of the large box, ready punched with air-holes and lined with straw (where had the straw come from? a distant part of Thorin’s mind asked, but he had learned long ago not to question Bilbo’s ingenuity). “I was going to take them to the local animal shelter.”

“You sounded so angry at them,” he said, and Bilbo must have sensed his discomfort, for he patted his chest comfortingly.

“Oh, it was only a momentary thing. But I do appreciate you trying to save me from them.”

Thorin was pretty sure he shouldn’t be feeling proud at Bilbo’s words, but he couldn’t help it.

By this point, the other builders had caught up with them, and were staring with some concern between the two. Bilbo brightened up at the sight of them.

“No need to worry boys!” he called out, cheerfully. “Minor mishap with the chickens. Was trying to get them somewhere safe, but well, I don’t think they quite understood that. Did you, Mildred?” he asked, waggling a finger at a different chicken this time (it looked, to Thorin’s eyes, identical to Henrietta, i.e., the child of Satan, but who was he to argue).

Bilbo sighed, a little wistfully. It was the sort of sigh that Thorin had long come to be wary of, because it inevitably led him to doing something that he didn’t want.

“I do wish there was a way to keep them though,” he added, as Thorin’s chest constricted at the warm desire in Bilbo’s voice.

Fuck.

Building a chicken coop wouldn’t be that hard, of course, and knowing Bilbo would also end up meaning fresh scrambled eggs every day (a little over done and perfectly seasoned, exactly the way that Thorin loved them). The chickens could stay in the orchard, but would be safe from foxes at night, making both them and Bilbo very happy (he didn’t care about the devil birds, but he did rather care about Bilbo)… but it would involve Thorin getting close to them.

Not happening.

But how to tell Bilbo?

That was when Bifur stepped up, signing something quickly. Thorin knew the basics of sign-language, but not enough to follow what was being said. Luckily Bofur was to hand: he nodded, and signed something back to Bifur before turning back to Bilbo.

“My cousin says that he’d be happy to build you a coop to keep them safe, and it shouldn’t take him more than a day,” he said, as Thorin watched Bilbo’s eyes light up. “They’d be able to stay then, and would be out of… err, everyone’s way.”

Thorin very much appreciated that Bofur had not even flinched as he excluded Thorin from that statement.

The situation resolved, and Bilbo remarkably pleased, Thorin made his way back to the house. It was only as they fell asleep that night, Bilbo naked and warm in Thorin’s unzipped sleeping bag, that he realised that they would still have to find a different home for the chickens once the renovations were done, and they moved back to the city.

Day 22

Thorin, personally, thought that he had been remarkably restrained when dealing with Minty’s washing-up sabotage. He had, in fact, only yelled at the pony once (it had blinked, slowly, in response, before whinnying again). But this time it had waited until he had been putting away the plates from dinner to appear, when he had been least expecting it, and in his surprise he had promptly pulled the door to the cupboard clean of the frame with a great cracking of wood that he knew, instinctively, would be heard by Bilbo.

“What have you done to my kitchen?” came the inevitable voice from two rooms over.

Ears like a… like a bloody cheetah, Thorin thought to himself, knowing full well that didn’t make sense.

“Traitor,” he whispered to the pony, through the window. “After I named you and bought you hay. I thought we were friends.”

The pony blinked at him, slowly.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” he called out, through the kitchen door. “Minor mishap with the cupboard, I’ll fix it now.”

Except, looking at the splintered wood and broken hinges, he knew instinctively that this was not something that he could fix, not without using a lot of wood glue and ruining the whole thing. He would have sworn under his breath, but then Bilbo’s voice from behind him made him jump (damn man could creep like… well, probably also like a cheetah).

“You can’t fix that,” Bilbo was saying, with a frown, when Thorin finally tuned back in and his heart rate had returned to normal.

“Err,” Thorin said, still blinking.

“And I don’t suppose we’re going to be able to order a replacement cupboard for a kitchen this old, are we?”

He shook his head, and Bilbo rolled his shoulders, a loud click coming from somewhere that made Thorin immediately want to offer to rub them for him.

“I suppose the old place had needed a renovation for a while anyway, hasn’t it?” Bilbo said, hands on hips now, staring at the old eighties fittings with an appraising air. Thorin, who knew full well when his opinion was needed and when Bilbo was making his own decisions, nodded.

“It’ll add a bit more time on,” Bilbo continued, sliding just in front of Thorin so he could press his back against Thorin’s shoulder, his head falling into the curve of his sternum as it had done so many times before. Instinctively, he tried to wrap an arm around Bilbo’s middle, conveniently forgetting that he was still holding on to the cupboard door and whacking them both around the knees.

Bilbo tutted at him, though not with any real annoyance.

“We might as well renovate the whole thing,” he concluded, with some determination. “The place is already messy, better to do everything that needs doing and then just do one big clean up and redecoration, isn’t it?”

Thorin nodded, burying his face in Bilbo’s hair, mentally calculating how much longer an additional kitchen would keep them in the cottage – about a week, was his conclusion.

He didn’t want to think about why that made him so happy.

Day 26

The first thing Thorin knew about the beehive was when Bilbo appeared with it, ready built, in the backseat of the range rover.

Not a true hive, of course – he might have been questioning Bilbo’s mental state if he had plucked a live nest from somewhere and had tried to drive off with it – but one of the ready-made, bee-keeper hives. It had a jaunty little roof, and was painted white.

Thorin, drinking tea in front of the front of the house, where the wall was now almost entirely repaired, the empty windows still staring out accusingly at them, blinked slowly as Bilbo clambered out of the car with a jaunty wave.

“Look at what Radagast gave me!” he called out, as Thorin spilled tea on his fingers and swore in his head.

“Radagast of the pink guest house?” he asked, as Bilbo attempted to wrestle the thing (wider than he was) out of the car.

“One and the same! I met him in the village when I was buying groceries and we got to talking about honey. He collects his own, from his beehive, you know? Fascinating stuff, he’s very ethical, very concerned about the preservation of the bees. He has loads of hives, apparently – the bees love him, he doesn’t even need to wear any of the protective stuff anymore. Seems a bit mad to me, but what do I know? Anyway, we got to talking, and I said that it was always something I wanted to do, and one thing led to another. I have instructions on how to set it up, and then he said he’d bring a small swarm to settle into it in a few weeks!”

Thorin wasn’t exactly up on how one transported live bees, and he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.

“Um, Bilbo,” he began, realising as Bilbo turned delighted eyes on him that there was no way in hell he was going to be able to quash this idea. “I didn’t know you’d always wanted bees?”

Bilbo shrugged, as Thorin finally realised he should be helping and went to do exactly that.

“Well, not much point thinking about it in the city, you know,” he said. “And I always had the shop to worry about, would never have any time to focus on this sort of thing. But I’m not getting any younger, and I should do it now, if I ever want to.”

That stung a little, and Thorin ran his eyes over Bilbo quickly, a once-up-once-down that he had perfected over the years when ever worry bit at his chest – a few more wrinkles, more silver in his hair, his nose a bit redder and his middle a bit rounder, but still hale and healthy and gorgeous and everything he needed, alright you can calm down now Thorin he’s not going anywhere anytime soon – and nodded.

“Might as well, then,” he grunted – the hive was a lot heavier than it looked.

Bilbo was watching him, carefully, both of them carrying the thing now. His eyes were warm.

“I do love you, you daft old thing,” he said, and Thorin almost stumbled, only just managing to keep his feet.

“Love you too,” he mumbled. “Now where do you want this stupid thing?”

Day 29

Thorin tried very hard to stuff the catalogue beneath his sleeping bag when Bilbo fell into the tent that night, even though he really should have learned after all these years not to even bother. Bilbo had a nose for deception (maybe also like a cheetah), and he glared at Thorin from his rather undignified post sprawled across the air mattress before Thorin relented, and handed it over.

“Ooof,” Thorin grunted, when Bilbo’s elbow caught his stomach as he tried to shuffle into a better position to read the catalogue. It wasn’t perhaps the most eloquent thing he could have said, and Bilbo promptly ignored him.

“Bathrooms?” Bilbo asked, as dread filled Thorin. “I thought the bathrooms were all fine, but for some of the plumbing?”

Thorin nodded, slowly. More changes meant more delays, which meant more time and money spent on the house. But honestly, the old bathroom set, though still fully functional, was perhaps not the most modern nor the most convenient, and though it had done them well when they had just been weekend visitors, he couldn’t help but think that having a nicer bathroom would serve them well when this was all done and they… moved back to the city.

Yes.

“Well,” Thorin began, cautiously. “I rather thought you might like to have a proper bath out here. One of those big claw foot ones that you can stretch out in properly. If we get a big enough one it might even fit us both… err, if you’d like that. And we can get all those fancy oils and salts that you like.”

Bilbo had an eyebrow raised. Even after all these years, Thorin still couldn’t tell if that was a good sign or not.

“And if we’re doing that, we might as well replace the whole thing. Get a bigger shower, a nice power one, good for aches, you know? And a new sink and loo, to match.”

“How will all that fit in our little bathroom?” Bilbo inquired, and Thorin felt a flash of hope.

“Well… I was thinking we could extend it into my office,” he mumbled, as Bilbo began to frown.

“I thought you needed an office?” he remarked, finally moving his legs and shuffling around the tent so that he was lying down properly and his limbs were no longer half-crushing Thorin (not that he was complaining, really). “In fact, I distinctly remember you saying that if I expected you to leave your business for long weekends then you would need dedicated wi-fi and a place where you could get away from my doilies and think about manly building things.”

Thorin would have protested, but he rather remembered saying that. He rather thought two bottles of wine had been involved. Instead, he shrugged.

“I’m not going to be working forever,” he remarked, trying for casual and, he suspected, managing vaguely constipated instead. “And I’ll still have an office. Just… a little one.”

Bilbo was still staring at him.

Thorin was trying very hard not to blush under the scrutiny.

“You can choose the tiles!” he barked, as inspiration struck him. “We can go tile shopping! Any colours that you like! You can pick out the whole thing!”

Never let it be said that he didn’t know the way to Bilbo’s heart. With a huff, Bilbo threw the catalogue down to the bottom of the tent, and threw himself into Thorin’s arms, who managed to recover very quickly from the rather pleasant change in situation.

“Now you’re talking,” Bilbo told him, and Thorin grinned, rather proud of himself.

They both sort-of (not really) regretted it the next day: their backs were rather too old for sex in a tent, and Thorin rather thought that they would never get the stains out of the borrowed sleeping bags.

He didn’t mention that to Bofur.

Day 34

Bilbo rather thought that the camp-bed was the best thing that he had ever lain on. Of course, he was pretty sure that he would change that assessment when the new bed that they had ordered arrived (along with a whole load of other stuff), once the house was finished and ready to be refurnished.

But right now, the camp-bed was not the ground. And it was inside.

Actually inside.

The thought delighted him. He was pretty sure that he shouldn’t be this excited about living inside a house again, but he couldn’t help himself – three weeks in a tent will do that to a person. And now the front wall was complete, the windows were in, and the water-damaged beams and floorboards had been replaced or repaired again, meaning that his darling house was, finally, habitable.

What a beautiful word that was, Bilbo couldn’t help but think.

Perhaps that was what made him so charitable when the cat finally made its reappearance.

The cat (the dragon, as Thorin had renamed him, always one for over-dramatics) had been conspicuous in its absence since work on the front wall had been nearly completed, and Bofur had turned his efforts to restoring the porch and fixing the conservatory door. They still had no clue as to how it had been getting in and out of the house, but the day that Bofur first began sanding the door down it had disappeared, leaving no trace of itself behind but for fur and the lingering smell of cat piss.

Now that the land was safe, reclaimed territory, Bilbo had immediately seen to it that the old furniture had been thrown into the skip, which made a rather sudden difference to the smell pervading the small space. With glee, he also determined that not only would the damp wall between conservatory and house need re-plastering, that the floor also should be replaced, with the same tiles that they had agreed on for the kitchen.

It was strange, in many ways, how content this renovation was making him, despite the dust and the dirt and the fact that it had been nearly a month since he had last known a proper bed. He perhaps hadn’t realised it at the time, but for the last few years he rather suspected that he had been… drifting. He had rather thought that such things would be beyond him at this age, that such feelings were for the young, twenty-somethings of the world, but apparently they were universal. His bookshop had been essentially running itself, his life so routine that he had felt as if he had little choice in things anymore, and now, he had actual decisions to make. Things to do and organise every day. Things he enjoyed.

Things that him feel in control. That made him feel happy. That made life feel a little more like he had always suspected it would, once he reached a certain age – only that age had never come, and he wondered now if that was because his life had not changed, in any distinct way, since he had fallen in love with Thorin and invited him into his life.

It was nice.

So when he returned to the conservatory with a cup of tea for Bofur who was now in the process of removing the old tile to make way for the new, it was in a good frame of mind – which he rather needed when he was confronted with the sight of Bofur cowering outside the door and shouting for his brother, and the cat standing in the middle of the room, hissing angrily. Poor Bofur had a rather angry set of claw marks on one cheek, testament to what had happened.

The cat turned to glare at him as he stood in the doorway, a little bemused.

Clearly, to the cat, this was its home, and it had taken a brief holiday to escape the noise of the a nearby renovation only to return to find that its home had been gutted by rather insufferable and inconsiderate builders.

No doubt this was the cat equivalent of the pipes in the upstairs apartment bursting when abroad, and no one bothering to fix them or repair the damage.

Thorin and the rest of the builders had appeared by this point, all standing around Bofur like an honour guard, muttering between each other. Bilbo, however, felt some deep sympathy with the cat – after all, he too had recently returned to a house only to find it destroyed, and he kneeled, placing the tea on the old tile, ignoring the way his knees creaked.

“Poor cat,” he said, in his gentlest voice. “You didn’t ask for any of this, did you? Poor, poor thing. I am very sorry, you know.”

The cat meowed plaintively at him, and he nodded as it padded closer.

“Bilbo,” came Bofur’s warning voice from outside. “That thing is evil.”

“Oh, it’s a bit sweetheart,” Bilbo retorted, as the cat butted at his hand with its head. “Aren’t you? Just a darling.”

“Please stop talking to the cat, my love,” came Thorin’s voice, more frustrated than concerned. Bilbo rather suspected that he was using his baby-cousins voice, what Thorin called his mother-hen voice, and that only meant one thing.

He stroked the cat.

The cat allowed him.

The sound of several builders taking deep breaths came from outside.

And then the cat was in his arms, purring contentedly, nuzzling at the underside of Bilbo’s chin in satisfaction as Bilbo straightened, scratching at its chin with a free hand.

“Thorin,” he said, quite decisively, as from outside came a combination of impressed noises and a low groan from Thorin, who knew exactly what was coming.

“We’re keeping the cat.”

Day 39

The cat, of course, was a complete nuisance, but Bilbo didn’t care. Being the responsible adult he was, he had inquired around the village to see if it belonged to anyone there, but like the pony and the chickens it seemed that no one was willing to claim it even if it had belonged to them to begin with - he did wonder if its rather unfriendly temperament might have had something to do with it, but didn’t feel the need to press the matter. He’d fallen completely in love with its grumpy domination of every room that it entered. It had a habit of shadowing Thorin’s footsteps, watching whatever task he was doing, and then swiping at him with extended claws every time it decided Thorin had done something wrong. He rather related to it, actually.

Thorin hated it, but that was rather inevitable.

He hadn’t decided on a name for it, but Thorin had taken to calling it ‘she-beast’ after Bifur’s gentle hands had calmed it enough to determine what sex it actually was. Unfortunately, the name had stuck, but Bilbo was actually rather getting used to it.

When she grew bored of Thorin, she would pad at Bilbo’s ankles around the garden, where he was finally starting to make some headway. The orchard, now that the chickens were safely in their new, large enclosure, was pruned back, to allow for proper growth, weeded thoroughly, and stripped of the ivy that had crept over from the back wall and ensnared some of the trees.  He still hadn’t worked up the courage to tackle the shed, using Nori’s dubiously acquired tools instead, but he had replanted the overgrown flower borders, filled in the holes left by fallen trees and planted those with new saplings acquired from the local nursery. The trunks themselves were to be dealt with next week, by a team of burly men with chainsaws, which would leave them with a very useful pile of wood to stock the recently built fire-wood shelter, giving them a nice supply to stock the (ordered, not yet installed) log burner that would take pride of place in the living room, replacing the old, ugly-tiled fireplace that had been there before they had moved in – once the trunks were gone, he would re-seed the lawn, and let nature take its course in replacing the grass. He had done a thorough perimeter check of the wall, and though was glad to see that there had been no damage, was still baffled as to how Minty had made it into their garden.

As for Minty, she still refused to leave the herb garden, and he had yet to find a way to move her anywhere more convenient so that he could sort it out, although right now he was loathe to try – she had given him rather a nasty nip last time he had even attempted it.

With all right with the world, Bilbo decided to call home – he had been in sporadic email contact with Fili about the shop since their departure, and though he trusted him, he was still rather invested in the success of the place, both financially and emotionally. But when he did call, sat out in the garden in the new cast-iron chairs that they had bought to finally enjoy the little patio that he had scrubbed clean of near a decade of mould, he found himself feeling rather put out.

“Hi, Uncle!” came Fili’s cheery voice over the phone. “I expected you to call and stress out sooner!”

Bilbo mumbled a little nonsensically down the line for a moment, before he remembered that he was the grown up one.

“I’m not stressing out,” he told him (not quite the truth, but not quite a lie either). “I just wanted to have a word about the bookkeeping.”

“Passed everything on at the end of the month to Balin, like I’m supposed to. Took a full stock report, ordered in everything new, and gave him that too.”

Fili was laughing at him, Bilbo could tell, but he couldn’t help but be a little surprised that everything had moved that smoothly. It wasn’t that Fili couldn’t do the job, of course, or Bilbo would never have taken him on, but he supposed that he had never really let him take the reins, or properly explained anything to him. Fili must have been watching, and remembering, for quite some time.

“Has Balin got back to you with the numbers?” he inquired, after a moment, suddenly feeling a little useless.

Fili yelled something indeterminate over his shoulder, and it was only then that Bilbo realised that he had called in the middle of the lunch rush – those hours had been fixed in his mind for years, and he was rather surprised to note that he had completely forgotten about them, just as Thorin seemed to have forgotten to do his early-morning-stress-and-plan routine that had been a part of their lives for as long as Bilbo had known him. Huh.

“Up five percent from this time last year,” Fili told him, and Bilbo could tell that he was grinning, proudly. “Silvian’s has a new baker, and she’s really good with pastry, so they’ve been selling like hotcakes. Literally, the day they had hotcakes. I was worried for a moment, but we put those raspberry scones of yours back on regular rotation, and our sales haven't been effected. She’s called Tauriel, you’d like her, Kili keeps following her around with moon-eyes but I don’t think she’s noticed yet.”

Bilbo laughed, despite the lump in his throat.

“I’m glad it is all going well,” he said, in the end, and Fili made a soft noise. He had always been crap at hiding things from his nephews.

“We all miss you,” he told him. “All the regulars keep asking after you. And I can’t keep Kili in control without you to flick tea-towels at him.”

“You’ll learn,” Bilbo told him, without quite meaning to. “And tell everyone hello from me. I miss you all too, you know. Particularly you two boys. I always knew that you would do a great job with the place Fili – I’m just a little sorry that I never gave you the chance to prove it sooner.”

“Uncle,” came Fili’s voice, a little scratchy down the line, and he trailed off, as if he didn’t know quite what to say. “Thank you.”

“Well,” Bilbo said, trying hard to sound normal again. “I’ve told you before, if you want the place, I’d always much rather give it to you than to anyone else when I retire. Whenever that will be. It means a lot to me, and it would mean a hell of a lot more if it stayed in the family.”

The call ended soon after that, and Bilbo was free to blow his nose with a rather tremendous honking noise. It was a strange feeling, to hear that the place was going on without him, but it didn’t hurt quite as much as he had expected it to. The pain was more nostalgic than longing, and he couldn’t help but wonder, as he picked the cat up to cuddle her (she wasn’t impressed, but tolerated it for all of ten seconds, a new record), whether or not he had already left it behind him.

Day 46

After a rather unforgettable attempt at making love on the camp-beds only to end up with one broken and the other rather cramped as they both tried to share, Thorin was feeling a little grumpy on the momentous day of the new bathroom arriving, which was something of a shame, for he had wanted to treat it with some due ceremony.

Still, he was quite excited by the time that the truck rolled up (three hours late) and deposited loo, sink, shower, tiles and quite the largest bath that he had ever seen.

“Thorin, I’m going to drown in it,” Bilbo remarked matter-of-factly when he tried sitting in the thing, still on the front drive and wrapped in cellophane and protective cardboard. “Look at it! I can barely clamber in to the damn thing.”

Indeed, Thorin had perhaps gone overboard on the bath thing, but he would blame being spurred on by the thought of being able to share it comfortably with Bilbo – and if the incident with the camp-beds last night was any indication, then comfort was something to be sought after at all costs. The he of twenty years ago would not have agreed to that, but the he of twenty years ago had not been fifty-four and full of aches, pains and knees that just did not quite seem what they used to be. So screw that guy.

“I don’t know,” Thorin said, climbing in after Bilbo. Sat on the bottom, had Bilbo not been in the way, he could lie back against the sloping sides, his neck just resting against the curve at the top. It had room enough for his shoulders and to stretch his legs out fully, and to illustrate this point he grabbed Bilbo round the middle and scooted him onto his lap. Bilbo let out an oof of protest and being so manhandled, but lay back against Thorin’s chest none the less. It might have looked a bit ridiculous, but Bilbo nodded, quite decisively, at the arrangement.

“Well, alright then,” he said, breathing deeply. “I suppose this will be quite nice when it is all in.”

“We’ll get you a little set of steps to get in,” he whispered, his nose rubbing at the curve of Bilbo’s ear, which caused him to shudder quite pleasantly in Thorin’s lap.

“I do hope I’m not interrupting,” came a rather amused voice from outside the cosy confines of the bathtub, and Thorin started at the sound, accidentally whacking his nose on the back of Bilbo’s head.

“Ouch! Gandalf! What the hell are you doing back here?” Bilbo half-yelled, obviously startled himself. Thorin ended up with a rather uncomfortable elbow to the stomach and foot to the thigh as Bilbo scrambled out of the tub, and he made a mental note to practise in the bath a couple of times before they actually attempted any proper manoeuvring within it.

“And you did interrupt,” Thorin couldn’t help but remark, as he climbed out after Bilbo.

Gandalf just smiled at them both, and Thorin blinked at the sight of his rather bizarre silver trench-coat.

“I came to see how the renovations were coming along, of course,” he told them both as he breezed past them towards the house. “We have to follow up on such things, you know,” he remarked over his shoulder.

Thorin and Bilbo shared a glance, the sort that a couple often perfect after enough time together, the God he’s a pompous arse and sorry if I elbowed you by accident and do you think Bofur would help us bury him under the patio sort of look. It was rather validating, in a way, to share their feelings in such a private and personal manner. Thorin was almost comforted by it.

“It’s looking remarkable!” came a shout from inside the house as they hurried after him. “I do love what you’ve done with the wainscoting.”

Bilbo glanced at him.

“I thought you took the wainscoting off?”

Thorin resisted the urge to close his eyes in frustration.

“We did.”

It turned out that Gandalf’s interest in the house was less professional and more personal: to be specific, his concern was for Bilbo, which put Thorin on edge immediately. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to speak to him, but how much Bilbo did not seem to want to deal with that – not today, not any day – and when Bilbo spat out an invitation to tea through gritted teeth his concern went from five to ten on the scale.

It wasn’t concern for Bilbo, you understand.

No, he was worried whether Gandalf would leave with all of his teeth intact.

Thorin hovered awkwardly in the kitchen doorway as the two of them exchanged rather forced pleasantries over tea and tiny little cakes that Thorin could have sworn they didn’t have in the house (he might have investigated that further, but Bilbo always seemed to be able to make food magically appear whenever he had to entertain even if the cupboards were, quite literally, bare.

“A beautiful house to retire in,” Gandalf remarked, when Bilbo had poured the tea. Bilbo just gave him a rather filthy look over the teacups, at that.

“Shame my mother didn’t get to take her entire retirement in such a place,” he replied smartly, and Gandalf shot him a wounded look.

“Bilbo, my dear boy, I warrant that you knew your dear mother far better than I ever did, and if you can honestly look me in the eye and tell me that she was the kind of woman who would have been forced into doing something that she hadn’t entirely believed in, then I will indeed accept blame for those couple of years,” he said, and to Thorin’s surprise, after a long moment, Bilbo physically sagged.

“Yes, well,” he said, with something of a sniff. “That doesn’t mean that I am going to start liking you, you know.”

Gandalf beamed at that.

Thorin blinked. He had never seen Bilbo back down from a fight in his life, much less when any perceived wrong-doing was involved – the man could hold a grudge for centuries, if required.

“I would expect nothing less, my dear boy. Now, tell me – what are your plans for interior decoration? You know, over the years, I have been complimented once or twice on my impeccable style. You must let me have a look at your plans.”

In sync, Thorin and Bilbo both eyed the rather scruffy 1970s Rolling Stones tour t-shirt that Gandalf had revealed upon removing his trenchcoat, and then exchanged another one of those meaningful looks.

But, eventually, and with a sigh, Bilbo rose to go get the fabric swatches, leaving Thorin feeling rather uncomfortably like something fundamentally had shifted in the room that he wasn’t privy to.

Day 49

The momentous day of the arrival of the bees came quicker than Thorin would have liked, because he still had not managed to reconcile himself with the inherent sense of permanence that they left him with. Also, he found himself somewhat nervous about inviting bees into their garden. Despite Bilbo’s assurances that they were placid creatures, a youthful trick gone awry with a hornets nest still left Thorin feeling a little unsure about anything particularly… stingy.  

Radagast arrived early in the day in the most bizarre car that he had ever seen: it appeared to be made up of several different cars, all painted various unappetising shades of brown, and tied together with nothing more than string and good wishes.

He eyed it uncertainly as Radagast disappeared into the cavernous boot to retrieve a rather large and rather ominous box, a smaller one balanced on top.

He wasn’t sure if he was more concerned about the boxes exploding, or the car.

Radagast didn’t even seem to notice him, only nodded carefully and rather inexplicably at Nori before stumbling over to Bilbo, who was practically buzzing with excitement himself.

Bilbo had spent all his free time in the last few weeks reading up on beekeeping, and he had had significantly more of that than he wanted since the trunks had finally been carted away and he had re-seeded the lawn. Until he was willing to tackle the spider-shed (not that Thorin was going to dare tease him for that after his own involvement with the chickens) and until the house was ready for plastering, there was little that Bilbo could do apart from pick out colours and furnishings in advance. Though he had lost a whole couple of days to planning the new kitchen, such things could not keep him thoroughly entertained by themselves, and so, the bees had stepped in.

Not literally, of course.

Well, not until today. 

Thorin still wasn’t entirely sure about the process – Bilbo had been mumbling about sugar plugs and the queen’s smell, but that might have been Greek to Thorin – but he trusted Bilbo to at least not do anything daft like refuse to wear his veil or try and get in the box with the bees. He also hadn’t quite dared remind Bilbo that it would probably require more maintenance than they would be able to give the box once they moved back to the city and resumed work – but it was hard to do so when Bilbo was just so obviously happy at the prospect.

“We won’t get any honey in the first year,” he heard Radagast say as Bilbo padded over to join him and the two of them wandered down the garden. “But all good things come to those who wait.”

Thorin heard no more, and quite frankly he didn’t want to – he knew that the more he heard the more he would end up freaking out about the various (and probably ludicrous) things that might happen.

Now, it wasn’t that Thorin necessarily had a problem with imagining the worst case scenario.

Just that he always did it.

“Hello,” came a voice from behind him, and Thorin had to try very hard not to jump at how suddenly the man had crept up on him. At least, Thorin couldn’t help but think as he put down his tools and forced himself to breathe calmly, the man did not look very threatening: he was of a similar age to Thorin, and though his shoulders were broad and his waist was narrow still there was a softness to his cheeks and his hair was pulled back in an elegant braid rather similar to that which Nori wore.

“I’m looking for Mister Baggins,” the man told him, with a small smile. “My brother mentioned that he had an interest in bees, and I am rather an old hand with them.”

Now, normally speaking Thorin wouldn’t let anyone wander through his house, no matter how neat their appearance was, and he was about to request a little more information from him, but Nori beat him to it, glaring down the hallway at the newcomer.

“What the hell are you doing here, Dori?” he demanded, and the similarity in their features made it abundantly clear whose brother this was. Thorin was having a hard time reconciling the genteel man before him with the foul-mouthed, rough handed builder that he had come to know over the last few weeks. Likewise, the sight of Nori slowly growing redder at the sight of his brother was something that Thorin never thought he’d see.

“Now, now,” Dori said, striding towards Nori, whipping a handkerchief from a pocket to wipe at a smudge on Nori’s cheek. “You know that Mama doesn’t like it when you curse. And I brought you lunch, it’s in the sedan – you forgot to stop by to pick it up this morning, and don’t think I don’t know that it was because you were out too late drinking again.”

Nori, rough and tough Nori, suddenly looked all of fifteen again, rubbing uncomfortably at the back of his head.

“Dori,” he whined, definitely blushing now. “Please don’t. Not when I’m at work.”

Dori just patted his cheek, gently. 

"Now," he said, turning back to Thorin. "Do tell me where the remarkable Mr Baggins, who has decided to become a part of our bee-keeping club, can be found? I have some advice that will prove much more useful than anything that charlatan Radagast can offer."

Thorin blinked. They had been studiously ignored by the locals every time they had come here before, save for the usual meaningless pleasantries, and aside from the local builders and suppliers Thorin himself had not had any particular contact with any of them. He was not entirely sure at what point Bilbo had been welcomed into the local community (much less a bee-keeping club), but he rather suspected that it had something to do with Gandalf. 

He pointed, wordlessly, down to the bottom of the garden. 

Dori nodded at him, smiling just a little. 

"There are several lavender bushes in the back of the car that need imminent planting," he remarked, as he swept from the house. "Nori will bring them out, when he fetches his sandwiches."

Bofur, at least, waited until he was out of earshot before laughing at the pair of them, still staring, blinking, after him.

Day 54

This particular day proved to be something of a milestone in the project, although not for reasons that any of them were expecting. It would be the day that the final parts of the bathroom were plumbed in, of course, which was quite exciting in and of itself, because it meant that they could finally check to make sure that all the pipes actually had been repaired, and would also finally have a working inside bathroom again, which meant that Bombur could get rid of the much-maligned port-a-loo that they had all been relying on. It also meant, of course, that Thorin and Bilbo were not far off being able to use their own shower again, rather than riding down to Bofur’s down the street at the end of every day and using his instead (honestly, Thorin was rather impressed that Bilbo had made it this long without proper plumbing, if he was going to be honest with himself).

But that wasn’t it. Neither was it due to the unexpected arrival of Fili and Kili for the weekend: the bookshop always closed up for the last bank holiday weekend in August, and Fili had obviously decided to maintain that tradition so that they could better investigate the cottage that his Uncles had abandoned the city for.

He might have appreciated the company more any other day.

The first he had been aware of it was when a great clattering came from the outside, the sound of something quite heavy (and probably expensive) falling from something of a height: the next had been the ungodly shrieking from the living room.

He ran full pelt from where he had been embracing his recently arrived nephews in the garden, expecting, perhaps, an electrocution, or even the sudden discovery of a satanic cult living in the cellar (at this stage, Thorin really was prepared for anything. You have no idea the things that he has seen renovating old buildings over the years).

What he wasn’t expecting was the sight of Nori wildly swinging his sledgehammer around his head at a strange, confused black ghoul that kept flying into the walls with rather disgruntled noises, leaving smears of black on every surfaced it touched.

“Nori!” Thorin bellowed. “Put the damn sledgehammer down!”

He hadn’t meant Nori to take him quite so literally: startled, Nori released his grip on the tool mid-swing. With a colossal thunk, it flew across the living room, landing squarely in the middle of the radiator, dinting it quite impressively.

The radiator let out a low and angry hiss at this treatment, despite the fact that there really wasn’t meant to be any air in the system, and it probably shouldn’t be able to do that.

Nori stared at him sheepishly.

“I’ll replace tha-” he began, before the black shadowy thing flew straight into the back of his head, knocking him flat to the ground.

Thorin had about ten seconds of stunning immobility before he registered that the shadowy thing, was in fact flapping, and he retreated quickly from the room, definitely not running despite what his nephews would later say, slamming the door behind him and wondering how to explain to Bilbo that they were simply going to have to seal this room off and never use or think about it again.

“What on earth is happening?” Bilbo asked, having caught up with him, staring with some trepidation at the door. Fili and Kili were staring at their Uncle as if he had grown a second head, but then again he supposed that they had never heard grown men yelling about sledgehammers before.

Thorin blinked.

“There is a bird in the living room.”

“Oh for the-” Bilbo cut himself off, shaking his head. “Thorin, really, we’re going to have to move past this at some point-”

“It knocked Nori unconscious,” Thorin hissed. “It’s still in there!”

“I’m not unconscious,” came a plaintive voice from behind the closed door. “And I would rather appreciate being let out of here.”

Thorin shook his head.

“Not happening. Bilbo, we’re burning down the living room. We just need to do some reading on controlled fires, and then-”

He cut himself off when he noticed the looks that his nephews were giving him.

Okay, perhaps he was overreacting a little.

They hadn’t thought all that much about the owl since the first couple of weeks: a couple of minor heart attacks when it flew down the chimney had been enough to prompt them to investigate the matter, only to discover that the cap on the chimney had been knocked off, probably some time ago, leaving a clear route for any particularly nosy bird (as well as rather a lot of rainwater, which accounted somewhat for the damp in the room on their arrival). They had fixed it rather quickly, to prevent more water damage, but mostly because Thorin had not wanted to be there when the owl tried to get in again.

It seemed their measures had not been enough.

Bofur appeared in the now rather crowded hallway next, with the chimney cap in his hands. It had smashed in two on contact with the ground, and he was frowning at the rather deep claw-marks that had been gouged in the cement that had once fixed it to the chimney.

Thorin scowled.

Bofur exchanged a look with him, and held the pieces up to the sunlight pouring in the hallway window. His frown was confirmation enough of what Thorin had suspected. It could have only done that whilst the cement was still fresh. Damn bird had started undoing his work that very same day.

Now it was personal. He had put that damn cap on himself.

He rolled up his sleeves, exuding the sort of calm, rational, strong confidence that only a really capable, manly man would have been able to project, fierce and independent and able to protect his home from anything-

And he turned to Bilbo.

“Darling, could you protect the door while I go and call pest control?”

From inside the living room, Nori let out a low shriek.

“Get out of my hair, you stupid bird!”

Thorin may have prided himself on his ability to care for his home and those he loved, but he knew his own weaknesses. A ten minute call to pest control had him directed to a local bird sanctuary, who had apparently lost a rather rare breed of owl some weeks ago when it had managed to get out of a small hole in the wire netting of its enclosure. Apparently, it had scratched at the wood of the frame until the industrial staples holding the netting in place had given way, and had been missing, no doubt terrorising the local mice population, since. It’s unconventional daylight hours were a result of the illegal operation that it had been rescued from, which had brought it up to entertain the crowds in the middle of the day.

Thorin was somewhat torn between pity, and fear at a bird that had literally clawed its way to freedom.

He agreed to keep the bird contained whilst someone from the sanctuary came to rescue it. Unfortunately, Fili and Kili had not predicted this, and by the time Thorin returned, Bilbo was thrown against the door in an attempt to keep it closed against the onslaught of three men and an angry owl.

Thorin raised an eyebrow at him.

“The re-wiring is almost done!” Bilbo snapped, as the door rocked behind him. “I’m not having that damn owl destroying any more of my damn cottage!”

From inside the room, Kili appeared to be screaming. 

Thorin hadn't heard sounds like that since his nephew had been a child.

Slowly, carefully, he reached for the door-jamb resting on top of the radiator, and with even more caution he wedged it beneath the door with enough force to splinter the wood, ensuring that it would not be open-able from either side. He shrugged when Bilbo glanced at him accusingly. 

"We're sanding down the doors next week anyway."

Bilbo moved away from the door, cautiously, wincing as it started to shake.

"What did the sanctuary say?" he asked, eventually, and Thorin shrugged. 

"Long story. They are sending someone over to take the bird away."

Bilbo nodded as the shrieks from inside grew louder. 

"How long do you think it will take them to realise there are windows in that room?"

Thorin shrugged. 

"How long do you think we'll last before Dis kills us for letting a bird eat her sons alive?"

Day 60

Bilbo rather thought that he had spent enough time with catalogues recently - the interior of the house was finally ready for plastering, and in the days leading up to that momentous moment had been left fraught by the sudden realisation that they might have to decide on how to decorate the house now that renovations were slowly gearing up for completion. The bathroom, of course, had already been decided on and fitted, and the new kitchen appliances and cupboards had been ordered, but every other aspect of painting, decorating, refurbishing and, well, everything, had yet to be chosen. 

Or even narrowed down, for that matter, despite just how long Bilbo had spent staring at paint samples for the last few days. The problem was, of course, that when it came to anything non-essential, he and Thorin just never agreed. 

They would reach a conclusion soon enough, of course, but Bilbo's last task was weighing on his mind too much for him to bring himself to care whether grey-greens or light yellows would work better in the new kitchen. 

Right now, he had foes to defeat, and he was finally feeling brave enough to do so. 

After all, he would need his shed back to made room for all the new gardening and bee-keeping tools he had been gifted recently, and he didn't care a jot that the spiders in there had been living in it for enough generations to acquire grandfather clauses. 

He could do this.

He had to do this.

So he fixed his bee-keeping veil over his head, took a deep breath, and tugged open the water-logged door. It didn't want to open at all, so he had to try rather hard, which made him stumble rather, falling forward as he let go, through the door. 

What felt like a thousand eyes stared back at him. 

He could almost feel the cobwebs. 

"Nope," he said to himself, taking steady steps backwards. "Nope, nope, nope."

Okay, so maybe there was something to be said for paint samples after all. Bilbo was quite certain that there must be a colour he hadn't seen yet in the Dulux catalogue. And fabric swatches! A lot left to do there.

Unfortunately, his sensible (and not at all scared) retreat was halted, quite suddenly, as he walked into Minty, who had come over to investigate. Worse, she was clearly in a skittish mood, and she startled as he slammed into her side, careering away from Bilbo and knocking full-bodied into the side of the old shed, which shuddered a little, unsteady after so many years of rain damage and untreated wood. 

Hmm. 

Well, that gave him an idea.

Several carrots and a bit of shoving later, his task was complete. No spiders left at all in the shed - mostly because there wasn't one left any more. In fairness, Thorin took the news that the pony had destroyed the shed fairly well. He might have turned a little pale at the news, but then again that might have been the plaster dust. 

Either way, Bofur agreed to build Bilbo a nice new shed, with no spiders whatsoever. 

Plus, a small shelter for Minty in the fallow field that had come with the house, which they had never had cause to use before now. 

After all, it was the least she deserved.

Day 65

Thorin was still a little suspicious about the shed, but since Bilbo had caved to Thorin's suggestion of a warm green-grey theme for the kitchen, he was willing to compromise, and let it go. Particularly since he had also wavered on the lace-patterned feature wall in the living room (Thorin still wasn't entirely sure what would ever possess anyone to put a feature wall in anything).

He was quite tempted, however, to bring it up again when Bilbo mentioned IKEA. 

Thorin hated IKEA. 

There was nothing about it he liked. He hated the tiny feature apartments (he always managed to knock something over), hated the indecipherable number of tiny knick-knacks that Bilbo always seemed to acquire at least ten of, hated the uncomfortable staged furniture in all manner of ludicrous colours, hated that he got lost even when he was trying to follow the arrows. 

"We can't go to IKEA, Bilbo, we haven't even started redecorating yet," was his first retort, but Bilbo had simply shaken his head. 

"We've picked all the colours and fabrics and tiles," he replied, folding his arms. "And the plasterwork will be dry by tomorrow, at which point I won't be able to drag you away until it is all done."

"Then we'll go then," Thorin offered, a little desperately, but Bilbo just raised an eyebrow. 

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing," he retorted, staring hard. "If you can find a reason to get out of buying cushions, you will. I saw your apartment before we moved in together, Mister, and if you think that beautiful new sofa suite we're getting isn't going to be covered with tasteful, matching soft furnishings, then you're as daft as you look whenever we run out of coffee."

Thorin caved.

Thorin always caved when Bilbo stared at him for too long.

IKEA might not have been too bad, had it just been them - no, that's a lie, it would have been terrible - but when they reached the car park of the closest IKEA (two hours in the car, not that Thorin had been counting down and hoping that it would be longer) there was a rather familiar car pulled up right next to the entrance - and a rather horrifically familiar figure standing by the entrance, waiting for them. 

"What is he doing here?" Bilbo muttered, through gritted teeth, as they disembarked. 

Thorin didn't have an answer for that. 

Why Gandalf was ever anywhere was not something that he really wanted to think about.

"Coo-ee!" Gandalf called, with a grin that shone even brighter than the silver-pinstriped suit he was wearing. "So delightful to see you both!"

"What are you even doing here?" Thorin asked, without meaning to, because honestly, he wasn't sure if he even wanted to know the answer. 

"Well, I saw you two pootling out of the village, and Bofur happened to mention that you were off linen shopping, and I thought I'd come and lend you a hand. You never know when an objective pair of eyes may make the difference in a make-or-break argument over throws, you know. I've seen couples break up over less!"

Thorin still wasn't sure how Gandalf had got here before them, but he was pretty convinced that this was now going to be one hell of a shopping trip, and he wondered to himself for a moment just how likely it would be that they would come out of this without having been forced to purchase any silver accessories. 

"Thorin," Bilbo hissed, out of the corner of his mouth. "Do you think anyone will notice if I strangle him with one of those long snake toys they have in the children's section?"

Gandalf was still grinning.

Bilbo was looking quite genuinely like he was going to choke a bitch. Thorin wasn't sure how weird it was that the expression turned him on a little. 

"Alright then, Gandalf," Bilbo muttered, rolling up his sleeves. "You want to shop? Lets see just how long you can shop."

Said attraction died, just a little. Thorin wondered if it was too late to slink off to the cafe and hide behind the meatballs. 

Day 73

Over two months, and the decoration was done. Walls had been repainted, tiled; sideboards had been glossed; floorboards had been re-varnished or covered over with soft new carpets. The whole place smelled faintly of wet paint, and turpentine, and Thorin found that he almost missed being able to pad around on dustsheets as he had been doing for the last few weeks. 

The beast also seemed unhappy with the changes, prowling around the place appraisingly as if it were they that owned the house, rather than Thorin and Bilbo. Thorin still wasn't entirely sure how much of their furniture was actually going to survive the cat's wrath should it decide that it disliked any particular peice).

The first furniture van arrived on time, to everyone's surprise. Luckily, Thorin had managed to remind Bilbo of the number of items that they had already ordered from local carpenters, so the IKEA van which pulled up soon after theirs was not stuffed with duplicates of anything that they had already bought. 

They worked together to move everything from vans and into the house, and he couldn't help but wonder if he wasn't getting a little old for all this carry on when his back screamed in agony as he and Nori lugged a particularly plushy sofa from the back of one of the vans. But the work had to be done, and they pulled together, working with surprising speed as Bilbo directed each piece to be delivered to a particular room. They chatted idly as they worked, trying to make the job go faster, and it was one such conversation that Thorin found himself overhearing as he delivered a large cardboard box of something to the living room.

"What are you going to do next?" Bofur called, cheerily, as he lugged in a bedside cabinet. "Bet your days are going to feel strange, without this house to fill them with!"

Thorin saw Bilbo nodding, frowning a little as he tried to navigate his way up the stairs behind Bofur with a rather large light fixture in his hands. 

"A vegetable patch, I think," he remarked, and Thorin stilled as he continued. "If I get stuff in the ground in the next week or so, I should be able to harvest a few things before winter."

But he didn't have to say anything - and really, he was grateful for that, because he didn't think he was ready to have that conversation. Bofur was the one who shot a curious glance over his shoulder, catching Bilbo's eye. 

"I thought you were goin' home once all this was done?" he asked, and Bilbo stilled. "Goin' back to the city, and all that?"

Bofur seemed to have noticed that he had said something wrong. 

Unfortunately, his response was to keep digging. 

"I just meant, I mean, that you'll probably not be able to keep up with any veg patch, right?" he added, visibly wincing at Bilbo's expression. 

There was a long, tense silence, before Bilbo finally nodded. 

"Of course," he mumbled, nudging Bofur with the light fitting. "Keep going."

Thorin would have liked to talk to Bilbo about it, but he seemed to shut off any option to do so, turning any attempt at initiating a conversation into a discussion of exactly where an armchair should go, or how best to angle a new light-fitting so that it would illuminate the room well without being too harsh. Eventually Thorin just gave in - certain conversations, he knew, would never happen as long as one half of the party wasn't ready to have it yet.

It took the entire day to get everything not only into the house, but in the right place - and once the furniture was in, there were the bags of soft furnishings that Bilbo had acquired too - all the cushions, and rugs, and throws, and the luxuriously soft bedding that they had spent a small fortune on at a boutique shop despite their better judgement. Thorin had to say, he was rather looking forward to sleeping in that tonight.

Particularly now that his back was aching like a little bitch. 

"That's it," he said, flopping down on the rug in front of the hearth after seeing the team out. "Every piece of furniture, every rug and ridiculous lamp. It's all in its place."

Bilbo nodded at him, slowly, hesitantly. 

"We're finished, aren't we?"

Day 74

The house was… done.

Neither of them had acknowledged that fact.

Well, they had found more things to do of course, in order to delay having any sort of conversation about it. Cleaning was necessary, and there was more work to be done in the garden. Bilbo found several things to re-arrange despite having proclaimed that he had been happy with them originally. 

Then, with little else to delay them, they had spent just the night before curled up on the new sofa, Thorin’s back still twinging a little, as they had made a list of all the things that they thought would work better in this cottage than in their main home. All the new furniture had made it seem close-to-right, but not quite there yet - and they had realised pretty quickly that it was lacking the small personal touches that make a house a home. They had a lot of stuff between them, crammed into the rooms of their house, as well as a storage unit full of knick-knacks that they had never had a place for before now. But Bilbo’s mother’s china would fit beautifully in the new breakfront; Thorin had an old family tapestry that would look wonderful at the hallway at the top of the stairs; they had been given a lovely pair of art deco lamps for their tenth wedding anniversary that had never looked right in their city home but would be perfect for their bedroom here.

Bits and pieces of a life accumulated separately and together.

That stuff made sense. It went on the list quickly, efficiently. Things that had never had  a proper home before, things that they had always wanted to display, but had never had the right room or enough space or the right décor to pull them off.

But then other things were added, and Thorin found himself writing down more and more and more as the evening had worn on. Fridge magnets that Fili and Kili made (they’ll suit the kitchen here better), the portraits of Bilbo’s parents (but don’t you think we need something over the fireplace in the dining room?), the good coffee maker (you can use the crap one at home, you never take the time to taste it in the mornings before work anyway). It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal at the time, but as Thorin began packing stuff up he realised just how much they were really bringing back to the country house.

Bilbo had stayed behind, and as Thorin had walked through the front door, he had been a little glad of it. It had been strange going inside, a fine cover of dust coating old and familiar things. They hadn’t even been gone that long, in the grand scheme of things, but being back here made it feel all the longer, as if something irrevocable had shifted within Thorin. He had wandered through the house slowly, picking up that which he had come for (his special support pillow that he would never admit having, Bilbo’s tea box) and that which he had not remembered but now realised that they would want in the countryside (the framed picture of him and his siblings from his bedside table, Bilbo’s favourite winter jumper). But he hadn’t been able to displace the disquiet in his chest, the one that made him pause from time to time, that made him think, after all this time, I have finally changed.

Thorin had almost winced when he had caught sight of his office, packed with order forms and ledgers, through the open doorway. The thought of returning to work had suddenly left quite an unpleasant sensation in his stomach.

They hadn’t talked about it, about how the things that they had chosen were the ones that were most important to them. Mementos from holidays, cooking equipment handed down from Bilbo’s parents, paintings that they had chosen together. They hadn’t dared acknowledge what it meant – that, despite everything, this once-ramshackle cottage in a little village in the middle of nowhere had   quite slowly become the place where the most sacred objects collected through their lives should be.

Bilbo was in the shower when he returned, and Thorin did not feel like disturbing him. He wanted, quite suddenly, to be alone, to try and work out what the new and uncomfortable feeling in his chest really meant, and so he took the first box of things through to the kitchen, and began to unpack. Old, well-loved equipment went in brand new cupboards; things that he had seen and loved for so many days over the years found a home among that which was still unfamiliar but that he knew he would come to love too, in time, and he thought.

He thought for quite a long time, unpacking slowly, until something caught his eye.

He stared at the mugs that he had pulled from the box with some confusion, for quite a while. He hadn’t even noticed that he had picked them up from the house, if he was going to be honest with himself, and he wondered quite what his subconscious had been trying to tell him by wrapping it carefully in bubble-wrap and bringing it along to the cottage.

Except, he knew with some sudden clarity, he didn’t need to wonder.

He knew – had probably known for a while – what it meant.

Thorin put the two mugs down, quite gently, on the new kitchen counter, and, with one last look, wandered out into the garden.

They sat there, quite inconspicuous and unimportant, but for the significance it held to just two people in the world. One pretty ceramic teacup, decorated in acorns and oak leaves; one bright red mug, emblazoned with the shaky ‘World’s Best Uncle!’.

Day 74, part two

Bilbo first realised that something had changed when he saw the mugs.

In all the years that he had known Thorin, but for these last few months, Thorin had drank every morning cup of coffee from that mug. Fili and Kili had made it him for Father’s Day when they were six and eight, respectively: they didn’t have a father, they had apparently informed him on the day itself, when they had turned up with their two mother’s uninvited, but as far as they were concerned, their Uncle Thorin was even better.

Dis had told Bilbo once that that had been the only time she had ever seen her brother burst into tears.

It was less important to him what he drank his tea from, for he was not a sentimental thing in the same way that Thorin was, but that mug was important to him, too. Thorin had bought him the little cup and saucer, from an old antique shop on one of their first dates, and it meant something just because Thorin used it every day for him. It was his cup, the one he burned his fingers on, the one that Thorin knew how to fill to just the right amount.

They hadn’t brought the mug with them because this had been a temporary thing: they were always going to come back to the city. They would fix the house, fix the distance between them, then go back and resume their lives. Perhaps he had gotten a little carried away for a while there, making things out here a little more permanent, but it wasn’t like either of them had actually wanted to stay out here for the rest of their lives, was it?

Was it?

Well, he had to admit, he did enjoy waking up with Thorin every day, spending their time doing things they really enjoyed, most of them together: he liked not having to worry about getting to work and everything at the shop going to plan for the day: he liked their angry cat and collecting eggs in the morning and laughing and feeling that, for the first time in a long time, he actually had things to do every day that gave him a purpose and didn’t push him and Thorin even further apart with each passing year.

He liked it here.

And if he was being completely honest with himself, he did want to stay: probably had, for quite some time.

But what about Thorin?

His life was in the city too – his nephews and his sister and his friends. He had built his firm up from the ground with Dwalin, so whilst it didn’t have the same value to him as Bilbo’s own inherited place, it had a value all the same: it had given him independence, had given him purpose, had created a life that he had never dreamt of having when he had been a child, struggling against the legacies of addiction and debt that his family had left him behind. His company was as much integral to who Thorin was as Bilbo’s was for him – and that was why he had never taken offense to the long hours, had always understood the dedication Thorin had for work, because in that way it was just like Bilbo’s own.

The house still sometimes felt oddly quiet without the builders around, without the constant noise of work being done somewhere, and so it took Bilbo only a moment to hear the sounds of labour coming through the open kitchen window.

He glared at Minty when he went outside: once again she had wandered away from her field, and was now staring longingly at Bilbo’s herb garden through the fine mesh cage Bifur had installed that was doing a stand up job at protecting his labours from interested ponies.

She just stared back at him with solemn eyes, and he sighed.

He’d always been hoping to stay, hadn’t he? Otherwise, what would be the point in keeping all these animals, in planting for the next year, in updating everything so that it was nicer than their small house in the city?

He found Thorin down by the orchard. He’d stuck pegs in the earth, connected by long lines of twine, and within the rectangular shape within, Thorin was digging, his shirt thrown to the ground in deference to the heat. Bilbo took just a moment to admire the muscles in his back, softer perhaps than they had been a decade ago, covered in coarse hair more grey than black now.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and Thorin jumped at the unexpected intrusion, turning to look at him before wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Digging a vegetable plot,” came his reply, his voice mild. “I thought you could start with one, and if you needed another we could put it in next year.”

Bilbo hadn’t been expecting that. He blinked, a little bemused, as Thorin went back to work.

“Can't maintain a vegetable plot unless we're here year round,” he remarked, trying very hard not to feel hopeful. Thorin simply shrugged, digging the blade of his spade deep into the earth.

“Was thinking about that,” Thorin replied, and then he did stop digging, stepping back from his work and turning to Bilbo so that he could see the gleam in his eye, the hopeful, happy brightness that seemed to strip decades away from his old, familiar face. “And I know your shop means the world to you, and that you’ll want to get back to it, so maybe it is a stupid thought, really. But I think, as much as I have loved work over the years, I also have given it a lot of time, and I love you, too. More. And when we’re out here, we see each other more. We wake up together in the mornings. We do things together. And the whole point of coming out here was to, I don’t know, reconnect, and I think we’ve done that, and my problem now is that I’m not sure if I’m okay with going back and things going back to what they were before.”

That was a lot of words, coming from Thorin, and for a long moment Bilbo did not know what to say.

Thorin was watching him, quite carefully.

“We’ve had offers to buy the business before,” he continued, when it became clear that Bilbo wasn’t going to say anything. “We’ve got good contacts, a strong reputation, and the offers have been good. We never took them up on it before, but I think, if we wanted to, we could do it now. Dwalin would be happy about it. He’s been muttering about retirement for a decade. And god knows, I’m not as young as I used to be.”

He rubbed at his back as he said that, and Bilbo wondered just how badly his knees were aching right now.

“Still just as handsome though,” Bilbo heard himself saying, from somewhere above his body, where his conscious mind was currently floating.

Thorin blushed, as he always did, and tried to hide it by rubbing his face, only succeeding in smudging dirt across his nose.

“Gandalf said this was a nice retirement home,” he said, quietly, and Bilbo found himself nodding. “I’d quite like to retire with you, if you’d be willing.”

“Thorin,” Bilbo said, finally coming back to himself. “Are you propositioning me?”

Thorin smiled, just a little.

“It won’t be the most exciting adventure we’ve ever had,” he admitted. “But then again, I think I’m rather old for the grand kind of adventures. I think I’m about ready for the small, domestic kind. We’ve already done the reclaiming a home from demonic creatures part, these last few weeks. There wasn’t any swords or armour or any big dramatic battle. But it has been fun, hasn’t it? And I’d like to carry on, and see what happens next. But only if you are, because it is the kind of adventure that I’d only want to go on with you.”

“You’re an idiot,” Bilbo told him, before promptly wrapping his arms around his ridiculous, sweaty husband. “I can’t think of anything else I’d like more.”

From somewhere behind them Minty whinnied, as if in agreement.

Imagine this: golden summers, and mild winters, and warm baths to take away the aches of aging joints; pony rides for a myriad of young cousins and nephews and great-nephews that always find their way to a cosy cottage in the height of summer; two pairs of hands preparing vegetables that they grew themselves (albeit one with much more skill than the other); imagine conkers left on every windowsill to keep away the spiders, that a grumpy cat tries to knock off as frequently as she possibly can; honey harvested with careful hands and shared between two lovers wrapped around each other.

Imagine this: Baggins’ Bookshop run by a Durin with blonde hair who thrives under the sort of domestic inheritance that suits him perfectly; people who have worked hard their entire lives finally taking the time to rest; imagine sleepy mornings where no one wakes up in bed alone, and coffee and tea are always drank together, on furniture picked out together, a blend of two very different tastes.

Imagine this: Thorin, his hair fully silvered now, his clothes just as smart and fashionable, his stomach soft but his body still corded with muscle maintained from a myriad of small jobs he finds himself doing around the village for new friends found through permanent residence; Bilbo, exchanging eggs and honey with neighbours for seeds and cuttings, wrapped up in Thorin’s old jumpers in the winter, never feeling lonely.

Imagine this: the two of them, time suddenly so plentiful that there is always enough for them to be together.