Chapter Text
Durin Investigative Services, 24A, Old Compton Road, London
By half eight in the morning Thorin was ready to gut his two nephews. Even for them, this was a record. No matter Kili's puppy eyes and no matter Fili's wizardry with microwave food, they were going to hurt.
Thorin braced his free fist on his desk in an attempt to focus. The receiver creaked in his other hand.
“Yes,” Thorin said through gritted teeth, “however, I’m telling you-” but the lady on the other end of the phone would not be railroaded; she continued to explain to him the terms of his internet contract and how for the last four months he had exceeded his limit by a considerable margin. The extra charges for the excessive downloads were perfectly legitimate. Thorin’s eye twitched and a mingled flush of rage and embarrassment spread up the back of his neck. The way she had said 'downloads' made him think that it wasn't music.
Yes, she continued, they would love to keep his custom, but didn't he realise that Durin Investigative Services was a business address? And hadn’t he read the three letters they had already sent out via monitored delivery? Thorin glared at the frosted door between his office and the reception, where his two assistants were apparently busy not doing what they were meant to.
"Yes." Thorin said through gritted teeth. "Of course. I must have forgotten. It won't happen again, goodbye."
Thorin dropped the call and stalked to his door, throwing it open to find both of his nephews engaged in sudden industry on the phones behind the reception desk.
Despite being born over a year apart they acted as close as twins, but looked anything but. Fili had inherited the dark blond hair that sometimes surfaced in their family and had let it settle into dreadlocks. Like the surfers that he had seen in Australia where he and Kili had lived with their mother years before, he tied them behind his neck and still had the lingering tan of someone who’d done most of their growing up abroad. Kili was slighter and paler than his brother and had acclimatised to the English weather better - if his brother wore vests and jeans Kili would wear his leather jacket and boots. With his long dark hair Thorin sometimes felt he was looking at himself twenty or so years ago. Each of them was on the phone, sharing the computer between them with the business calendar open on the screen.
“Yes, our opening hours are nine to five, Monday to Friday…” Kili was saying into his receiver.
“No, we are totally confidential…” Fili was saying down his line.
They were both as smart as they could be stupid. As Dis liked to say, her boys were clever in specialised ways. Fili could magic a PC to flood the prime-minister’s inbox with Viagra adverts and on his nineteenth birthday Kili had put the last piece on the motorbike he had been rebuilding since he was nearly seventeen. But ask the two of them to alphabetize a bookshelf and they’d end up colour-coding it instead.
As it was, neither of them had remembered that internal calls were displayed as such on the phones or that the other programs running on the computer could be seen quite clearly at the bottom of the monitor.
Thorin swept his gaze over them before reaching for the stereo occupying the top of the filing cabinet next to their rubber plant. He pulled the plug from the socket and Smokin’ in the Boys Room died into sudden silence. He didn’t want any distractions for this. He leant over Fili, who had fallen silent after forgetting to say goodbye to his pretend potential client, and plucked the phone from his nephew’s hands.
“Kili,” Thorin said evenly down the line, “join your brother and I in my office.”
A metre away, Kili winced. Then he replaced the phone it its cradle and swivelled towards them with a hopeful smile. Fili, however, was cringing - he out of the two of them sat nearer the office door and probably knew what was coming. Alongside Thorin’s glower, it was enough to put a dent in Kili’s bright expression. They both stood and followed him warily, sensing the impending storm.
Fili closed the office door behind them and came to stand next to his brother. Thorin turned to look at them, arms crossed over his chest.
“Okay,” he said, barely keeping a reign on his temper, “guess why I’m pissed off.”
“Because you haven’t had your coffee?” Kili suggested.
“He’s worse when he has.” His brother muttered in reply.
Kili continued. “Because you’re appalled at the state of the climate and as a Green Warrior -”
“Ki.” Fili interrupted quietly. Thorin's face was turning purple.
Kili didn't seem to hear. “Because you could only find odd socks this morning and-”
“Ki!” Fili cried.
“Downloads!” Thorin barked.
His nephews jumped as if shot. Fili's eyes widened and Kili looked as though he wanted to hide behind his brother. They both blushed.
“I've just been on the phone," Thorin said angrily, "asking why I'm paying through the nose for something that you think is important enough that it can't wait until you get home."
The boys seemed to droop. They were smarter than this. But Thorin was at the end of his rope. His reserves of patience and empathy (short at the best of times) had suddenly disappeared about the same time that he realised that he was a fool. Again. He breathed in, and out slowly. It didn’t help.
"People are laughing at us," he blazed. "Dis trusts me to keep you in line and happy and you ruin it by abusing my trust. It might not seem much to you but this company is all we have. I expected a hell of a lot better from you." Thorin seemed to sense that he was about to go too far. With hard-won patience he closed his eyes and took a breath in. When he opened them again the boys could see Thorin’s anger was still burning, but his voice was almost even when he said, “So," - he took another breath - "is there anything else I need to know about?”
Kili looked at his feet, before looking towards his brother. He pulled a fistful of crumpled envelopes from the back pocket of his trousers. “These came this last week, we were going to give them to you.”
Fili tried to come to his brother’s rescue. “We knew that the business was struggling but we didn’t want you to worry. Ever since uncle Frerin…”
Thorin was staggered. “Enough.” His expression immediately shuttered. He took the envelopes from Kili. “I don’t care if the business is struggling - it’s my business to know.”
Thorin ripped open the letters and looked through their contents wonderingly. He had often wondered if Kili and Fili’s awkwardness around paperwork was entirely authentic, but he had never thought they would wilfully keep secrets from him about his own business. They had jeopardized everything. Ever since their mother had flown back to Australia and Frerin… Well, Thorin had expected the boys to push their luck, but he had not expected this from them. Each and every one was a bill for this month. There was too much red. Thorin slumped against his desk.
“We didn’t mean anything by it,” said Kili defensively.
“No you didn’t, you know nothing of the world.” Thorin said harshly. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut against the worry and the anger, missing Fili and Kili’s reactions. Panic would only beckon a headache and he needed to keep their heads above water. And under a roof. If he was going to do that he needed to be sensible.
“I need to speak to Balin.” Thorin said flatly into the silence. He opened his eyes and straightened, dropping the heavy letters on the desk. He snagged his jacket from where it was hung on the back of his chair, slowly drew it on and squared his shoulders. “Those will be filed by the time you leave.” He gestured at the papers.
Fili and Kili followed him when he left the office, sticking close to each others’ sides.
“I will see you at home tonight,” Thorin said, not looking them in the eye. He pulled his last crumpled note from his wallet, before holding it out to them. “Get some take-away for your dinner.”
Kili hesitatingly took the money. When he looked up uncle Thorin was already halfway out of the door.
Kili turned to his brother. “Should we tell mum?” He said.
“Nah.” Fili tucked his younger brother under his arm and Kili leaned into him. Kili may have been nineteen, but when it was just the two of them neither would shy away from reassurance. “I think uncle wants to sort this out on his own. Mum’s got enough to worry about.”
Kili murmured something else and Fili tried to chuckle but failed. “No, getting laid would probably make things worse.” He glanced at their uncle’s retreating back. “I’ll explain later.”
***
In the next chapter we'll meet Bilbo, and he's not having a good day either...
Chapter Text
Mr B. Baggins, 1 Baggend Rd, The Hill, London
In a pretty but normal terrace house in England, in a pretty but normal suburb of London called The Hill, there lived a famous writer.
None of his neighbours knew he was a writer; he wasn't boastful, nor did he write under his own name, and since his parents had passed away some long years before he had not been particularly social. Oh, but he was very friendly and helpful should you meet him on one of his trips outside of his beautifully painted front door. Indeed, with matching green railings, trimmed hedges and lawn it was hard to think of Mr. Baggins as anything other than a perfectly nice, quiet type of young gentleman. If he was a little mysterious, well, everyone had decided that he was still quite respectable. After all, how many young men these days had such a collection of three piece suits and such wonderful waistcoats?
It was true that Bilbo Baggins believed in dressing well, and as such late morning found him industriously weeding his small vegetable patch in an older waistcoat and trousers with yellow gardening gloves up to his elbows.
Bilbo coaxed an exceptionally deep-rooted dandelion from the soil next to his marrows, then gazed at the long, tuberous root for a moment. Suddenly he had to fight the urge to fling the weed across the garden; it would only take root again wherever it landed. The similarities between this dandelion and his Sackville-Baggins relatives were really quite perfect.
Why had he ever thought that it would be a nice gesture to send Lobelia and her husband a signed first edition of his first book and a platter of cheeses for Christmas? He had been writing for nearly fifteen years now! It was time that someone outside of his publishing agency knew who was behind his nom de plume. Unfortunately for Bilbo, the fact that he hadn’t seen Lobelia in person for a year beforehand meant that he had forgotten exactly how much of a grasping, two-faced, madam she could be.
Her letter had arrived that morning and the irony of it was that she wanted to sell her story.
There would be more fiction in her story than there is in my novels! Bilbo thought uncharitably.
Now, Bilbo was normally of mild character. He could be sharply intelligent (though when he was, he was often as surprised as others) but was generous and warm. His curiosity was as present as it had ever been, and though the beginnings of middle-age had mellowed him he was still susceptible to fits of frustration and worry. Lobelia, especially, could upset him.
Bilbo was also a private man, one who was quietly proud of his successes. His books were well-known and well received; his publishing agency had been approached before about the rights to adapt them into scripts for television, maybe even a movie if the right funding and people could be put into place. All of this excited Bilbo greatly - it was proof that what he was writing was good.
But it was also well known that the name on the cover was not the real name of the author.
The possibility of being unmasked, of being an open book - a biography waiting to happen - filled him with panic. And now, with Lobelia lobbying to expose him, Bilbo felt more vulnerable than he had for a very long time.
Bilbo sighed, straightened, and dropped the weed into his basket. He tipped the unwanted plants into his compost bin and went inside through the back door and into his kitchen.
For those who knew Bilbo Baggins well enough to be invited inside (a small number for some, but perfectly fine for Bilbo), his comfortable Victorian home could serve as a barometer for the writer’s present disposition.
Today, everything was sparkling.
The windows were washed, the wooden floors gleamed and the carpet and rugs smelt of lavender cleaner. The portraits of his parents over the inglenook mantelpiece shone in their little gilt frames and … wait.
Bilbo adjusted the picture of his mother as it wasn’t quite straight and smiled when he had a sudden memory of sitting down with both his parents and using almost the exact same words.
So, the portraits of his parents were perfectly situated and shining and the old blue Aga underneath them had never looked better excepting the day it was built. All of his furniture was arranged just so - the chairs around the large kitchen table were straight, the cushions on his sofa and armchairs were plumped and the bedding in the spare bedrooms had been aired.
There was nothing out of place. Everything was perfect. He’d even dusted the picture-rails and scrubbed the Victorian tiles in the hallway.
And yet there was still an itch, a knot of something achy and disapproving that Bilbo didn’t want to look too closely at, and it was still settled firmly in the back of his mind, silently mocking his attempts to figure out how to make it go away.
Bilbo had a nagging sense that he was missing something.
He switched his yellow gardening gloves for his yellow Marigolds and began running the tap into the sink, ruminating as he looked over the dirty mugs, plates and cutlery stacked neatly on the countertop waiting to be washed.
He thought first of Lobelia, but knew that even before her letter arrived he had been feeling odd. Over the last few weeks he had fallen back on the old adage that a tidy home meant a tidy mind and tried to chase away the peculiar feeling of discontent with constant motion. It had been a distraction, but not a solution. It was as though something had given him a creeping sense of impetus and urgency but nowhere to go with it.
Now, he was forced to consider that perhaps what he was feeling had nothing to do with his house, and more to do with his life, and the choices he’d made.
Oh, Good God, Bilbo thought suddenly, going still, is this my mid life crisis?
With a soapy mug in hand he looked around himself, at the herbs in their terracotta pots, the Tupperware sorted and stored by size on one of the shelves and the ancient electric eternal beau kettle.
Well, he thought, if I am having my mid-life crisis, it’s unlike any I’ve ever heard about.
He had no urge for a motorbike or sporty car (though he rather suspected this had more to do with the fact that he didn’t know how to drive than the absence of a mid-life crisis) and he didn’t own anything leather (certainly not clothing) aside from some of his more expensively-bound notebooks and his shoes.
In fact, looking through someone else’s eyes, he thought that perhaps he was looking at the home of someone who’d decided to entirely skip that period of their life and jump straight into a passive kind of semi-retirement, the sort of quiet limbo that he’d seen happen to old widows or widowers when their orbit had been thrown by the absence of their life partner.
The thought made Bilbo slump and stay very quiet for a few minutes, absent-mindedly running the washcloth over the flowery mug and thinking of his mother after his father had died.
This was Belladonna’s house after all, left to him when he was only eighteen. It had felt wrong to want to change anything, so he hadn’t aside from some modernisation, and now Bilbo wondered what kind of person that had made him as a result.
But he’d managed well enough on his own for the last seventeen years hadn’t he? He was cautiously comfortable with the fact that there wasn’t anything out-of-the-ordinary or uncomfortable awaiting him in his near or distant future. Why would there be? He often went out of his way to make his life as uneventful as possible. He had nothing to complain about. In fact, he was being very silly.
Bilbo rallied and decided that he was only feeling this way because he didn’t have his writing to occupy himself. He had never lied to himself - he knew that his writing was his way of having adventures, ones where he called the shots and could make his characters as strong or as flawed as he wanted. Inspiration had been slow in coming, and hadn’t struck for a while, so he was feeling down. It made sense.
So, Bilbo finished the washing up and pottered around getting things ready for a cup of tea, hoping all the while for inspiration to strike today.
True, Bilbo had been at the writing game long enough to know that it didn’t always work that way. But he was also quite happy to wait a little while longer to see if it would, this time.
When the kettle clicked Bilbo distracted himself with the ritual of making his tea, adding sugar and milk and more sugar. He liked sweet tea. He glanced out of his window while the tea-bag steeped and saw next-door’s giant ginger cat sloping through his flowerbeds.
Bilbo was very fond of flowers, and not very fond of cats because of what they liked to do in his flowerbeds. He frowned at the creature until it clambered (not at all gracefully due to it’s rather large belly) over the wall and then went back to admiring his blooms. His garden was small but he grew lilies and snapdragons and laburnums the colours of flames; he thought they looked like fireworks against the dark soil.
Bilbo blinked. Well, that’s proof, Bilbo thought to himself, you really aren’t as prosy as you used to be. Tall daisies tapped against the kitchen window in the breeze as if applauding his conclusion. Bilbo frowned, put the tea-bag in the bin and took his tea upstairs with him.
His writing room was somewhere between an office and a library; surrounding his desk were shelves of books and folders on everything of interest: research for his novels, things that he might incorporate into future plots, books from museums and galleries with glossy pictures as big as the page and odd miscellanea found whilst raiding charity shops. There was always a vase of fresh flowers or greenery on the windowsill.
He put his mug on a coaster and started his computer, drawing his notebooks near. He was meeting Gandalf later that day, so perhaps it would be best if Bilbo could show him more than the myriad fussy edits and the hundred words he’d written since their last lunch two weeks ago.
He settled himself, staring sightlessly out of the partly open window to see if any new ideas would drift in on the breeze while he sipped at his tea.
They didn't.
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