Disclaimer: I own nothing. I kinda wish I had a little baby Frodo, though.
Author's Note: Well, this started out as a picture, but since I'm terrible at drawing, I decided to write it instead. The ending is kind of a tribute to the fact that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit to be a bedtime story for his children.
"Uncle Bilbo, can I have a snack now?" A small voice from the kitchen pierced Bilbo's thoughts.
"It's nearly bedtime, Frodo," he called back, but a moment later, he heard the banging of a door, and a small, dark haired boy entered the room, busily eating a piece of cake he had retrieved from his uncle's pantry. Bilbo put on his best stern face.
"Now, Frodo, I said it was nearly bedtime."
"So that means I can have a bedtime snack, right?" Frodo looked up at Bilbo, and the older hobbit's face dissolved into a smile.
"Of course," he said, patting the boy on the shoulder. "In fact, I think I might too!" He rose, and leaving his little cousin to eat his cake, entered the kitchen. He just stood there for a moment, lost in thought. He spoiled Frodo, and everyone in Hobbiton knew it. But when the little boy looked up at him with those large, clear blue eyes, he could never say no.
He had never quite figured out why he had decided to take little Frodo in two years ago. Perhaps it was because he had needed a distraction from his memories, and something to fill his life with here in the slow and sometimes terribly ordinary Shire. Perhaps it was because he saw in the little boy something of himself, some spark of that adventurousness that had prompted him to run after the company of dwarves all those years ago.
Or maybe it wasn't so very long ago.
Sometimes it seemed that very few years had passed since that terrible battle for the Lonely Mountain, since had sat beside Thorin Oakenshield as he lay dying on the battlefield. But as he stood there, having forgotten entirely his bedtime snack, he knew that it had been many years indeed. He was old now—or at least he felt old, very old. Turning he walked back to the living room where Frodo was sitting, his legs dangling off the chair that was a bit too big for the little boy.
And not for the first time in these last two years, Bilbo remembered the day he had first held this little life in his hands.
"Come now, Frodo," he said, and his voice was had a strange, faraway tone to it. "It's time for bed."
"But weren't you going to have a bedtime snack too, Uncle Bilbo?"
"Bedtime snack?" Bilbo said absently. "Yes, I…I suppose I was. But come, it's past time for you to go to bed."
"Aren't you going to tell me a bedtime story?" Frodo begged as Bilbo led him from the room, his thoughts still in other places. "You always do."
"Oh dear, I did forget, didn't I?" Bilbo shook his head, clearing it of all the thoughts and memories of the last moments. "Well then, Frodo, what would you like to hear tonight?"
"Tell me about Thorin and the dragon," Frodo said.
And so, sitting on the edge of his little cousin's bed, Bilbo did.
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