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"Do you think it's an infestation?" Bofur asks, poking at the rat that was happily nibbling at a carrot Bilbo had provided.
"An infestation of one?" Nori scoffs. “One Dragon is admittedly a problem, but this doesn’t strike me as nearly as dire.”
"Well, it usually starts with just one," Bofur defends. "And the next week you have two dozen rats running around and shitting everywhere, eating everything and-"
"It's an hamster, not a rat," Bilbo protests, scooping up the rodent to hold it in both his hands. The hamster (?) looks up at their burglar and wrinkles its nose and Bilbo smiles down at it. “Maybe Thorin could make me a cage for it. Him, I think it’s a him.”
Bofur and Nori look at the rodent, at Bilbo, back to the rodent, back to Bilbo again, and while they doing that they are also contemplating such things as
1.) a suddenly apparent likeness between their burglar and this little not-a-rat ,
2.) if a King should really be asked to do a smith’s work,
3.) if the King’s consort should really keep a rat as a pet, and
4.) if they've ever seen a curly haired rat before and if that could mean that Bilbo was correct about this ‘hamster’ thing, Bilbo marches out of the room; the not-a-rat still held in his hands.
-
To say that Thorin is sceptical about the rat (“It’s a hamster, Thorin.”) would not be doing the initial expression on the King’s face justice. Nevertheless, the ra- hamster is allowed to remain in Erebor, and Thorin even makes a lovely, spacious cage for it so that Bilbo will not have to worry about it getting lost (and so Thorin does not have to worry about it escaping and devouring their supplies of seed as the little thing’s stomach seem to be endless).
The ra- hamster is rather endearing though, that much Thorin is forced to admit after spending a few days with it around. The Dwarf can’t quite put his finger on it, but something about the curly fur, big soft eyes and how it’s always eating, reminds him of something… Mahal if he knows what though.
It doesn’t take long before Thorin starts sneaking it food, simply because it makes the tiny one so happy.
Thorin’s own tiny one, who usually answers to the name Bilbo, is less pleased with this when he comes to their quarters to find a much more ball-shaped hamster than he had left.
“You can’t keep feeding him, Thorin,” he scolds the king. “He doesn’t know when he should stop eating. You’ll make him sick.”
The hamster blinks up at Thorin with trusting eyes. (Really… what is this reminding him of, it’s starting to become annoying.)
-
The hamster is given the name Bill. No one is quite sure who came up with the idea originally, but everyone agrees that it seems to fit.
-
Fíli and Kíli love the new inclusion to the royal household. But after Thorin catches Kíli thoughtfully weighing the hamster like one would do with an object that potentially could be used as a projectile weapon, they are no longer allowed to play with him unsupervised.
"I'm the heir to a kingdom," Fíli sulks, "-but my uncle won't let me hold the hamster."
“It’s not like I was really going to throw it,” Kíli says despondently. “And if I would, it’s not like we’d drop it.”
Bofur snorts and shakes his head. "Holding the hamster sounds like you really mean to say something else,” he tells Fíli with an eyebrow waggle for emphasis. “And that sort of talk will only convince Bilbo that you shouldn’t even be allowed to look at his little pet,” he adds, turning to Kíli who slumps over the table.
Bofur is allowed to hold Bill. But of course he isn’t smug about it. Not at all.
-
Thorin wakes up from the sensation of tiny feet padding over his chest and up towards his shoulder.
"Bilbo," he murmurs and reaches out a hand to pat blindly at the sleeping Hobbit curled up against his side. "Your rodent has escaped again."
"How come-" Bilbo yawns and shows no signs of moving. "’that he's your hamster when he does something cute, and my 'rodent' when he does something you don't approve of."
"I see no problem with that," Thorin replies, reaching up a hand to pluck the little one of his shoulder.
Bill the hamster does not approve of this assassination attempt on his freedom and scurries away to try and reach the safety of Thorin's hair.
The Dwarf sighs as his hand only finds air, then winces when he feels tiny paws pull on his hair.
"Please get it out of the bed, I think it's nesting in my hair.”
Bilbo snickers and supports himself on one elbow to better observe what is going on. "You don't complain when you get injured in a fight, but Valar forbid someone pulls your hair."
Still snickering, the Hobbit moves to straddle Thorin's chest, a position Thorin feels rather appreciative of.
"Ah," Bilbo says. "Your hands on my backside is just to help hold me steady, yes?"
"What else?" Thorin asks as he contently squeezes one plump cheek.
"Right," Bilbo says after a moment of shuddering very prettily. "Now we really need to get Bill out of here before someone ends up flattening him. Come on, where are- oh."
"Oh?" Thorin repeats, feeling a sudden sense of foreboding. Not quite as bad as when Fíli and Kíli have been quiet for too long, but close.
"I think- it looks like he's managed to wrap himself up quite snugly in your hair."
"Well, unwind him then." He can’t hold court with a hamster in his hair. Dís would laugh herself to death.
"He might actually be stuck,” Bilbo says after a few uncomfortable minutes.” Do you have a pair of scissors?"
Thorin's eyes open wide.
-
Dwalin looks down at the furry little thing in his hand. He tentatively reaches out a finger to stroke one of its silk-soft ears.
When it turns its head into the caress Dwalin grins broadly and does it again.
Thorin needing to be cuddled out of a hair-related snit and Bill needing a hamster-sitter might actually be quite pleasant.
-
One morning Bill is nowhere to be found. He's not in his cage, and not anywhere else inside Thorin’s and Bilbo’s rooms either.
At first it’s just the company who searches for him, but then when the word gets out that the consort’s pet (because Thorin still isn’t admitting to anything) is lost, many other Dwarfs decide to help out as well.
Most of them are fairly unsure what a hamster looks like, and Nori’s and Bofur’s description of ‘like the consort, only smaller and more hair,’ is less than helpful.
Meanwhile, Bill is happily plodding along the hallways; sniffing and exploring, and he eventually ends up in the kitchens where he falls asleep in a sack of a grains.
The cook who finds him first mistake him for a piece of someone's beard and is just about to ask if anyone has been dishonoured lately and why they have to involve his kitchen, when the locks gain feet and eyes and a frankly pleading expression when Gil picks it up.
Gil looks down at the tiny piece of fluff in his hand.
"Well, I know rats and you're not a rat," he tells it. "But you can't sleep in the food."
The piece of fluff blinks up at him with big, soft, wet eyes.
"I think my daughter would love you," he muses as he puts it in the pocket of his apron. "I got her a pet rock, but she wasn't too fond of it, you see." The fluff peeks up above the pocket edge, squeaking happily when Gil gives it a grape. The grape instantly disappears into its mouth.
Gil blinks, and gives it another. This too, disappears. So does the following three. But by this point the thing’s cheeks are starting to look awfully bloated.
“I’m not sure if you know what to do with food,” he tells it. "Swallowing is usually required." Best to hand it over to Mala right away, let her be the one to help it figure it out.
The piece of fluff seems very uninterested in leaving the kitchen, so Gil ends up picking it up again (to avoid it escaping from the pocket) and bribing it with another grape as he carries it out of the room.
He’s not gotten far when-
"Unhand the hamster!" Ori demands and Gil looks sceptically at the piece of grape-stuffed fluff in his hand.
"This is the hamster?"
"You are not cooking it!"
"I wasn't going to cook it," Gil protests. Because he wasn’t.
It’s cute and all, but... he’s always thought that the consort's pet would be a little more... majestic.
The hamster accidentally spits out a grape and takes a moment to look appalled over its own lack of manners. Then it quickly stuffs the grape back inside its mouth again.
Definitely more majestic.