A/N: I don't own the Hobbit. Happy birthday MegMarch1880!
The dungeons were not Hobbiton. They were, it was true, in a hole in the ground, but this was not a nice hole like Bag End. It was dark and cold and did not have nearly enough food in it.
Which was why, of course, Bella told herself firmly, Thorin's offer of food did not mean at all what it would in the Shire. She had not eaten at all for the past two days; Thorin was merely being practical in offering the bread he had been given. Generous, but practical.
That it was the only food he had, that he was offering it while the two of them were alone - That might have meant something if he was a hobbit, but he was a dwarf, and she could hardly expect a dwarf to recognize obscure hobbit courting rituals.
It was just - Well, obscure and ancient as it was, it was a very romantic courting ritual. She was suddenly glad for just how dark it was.
"Bella?" Thorin asked, voice slightly anxious.
"Oh!" Here she was, blushing even more furiously and staring like a fool when poor Thorin could have no idea why. "Thank you." She took the bread and then faced the awkward question of what to do with it.
In the days of the Great Journey, giving up all of one's food to another was, of course, quite an important gesture. I would rather go hungry than watch you suffer. The response was equally significant. To turn it down, no matter how politely, was to say, I'd rather starve than accept anything from you. To share it back equally, as would be otherwise sensible here, was to reciprocate their feelings.
It didn't matter, of course. It wasn't as if Thorin meant anything by it, or even realized what he had done.
But it meant something to her. It wouldn't be proper to split it and then go on like nothing had changed.
And she was really very hungry.
So she gobbled the whole thing down, which could mean anything from, I'm hungry to Try again.
For a split second, she thought Thorin looked disappointed.
"Oh!" she cried again. "I'm so sorry! Have you not eaten? I should have shared - "
"It was offered freely and fully," Thorin interrupted. "I have had far more to eat than you, and am more built to endure deprivation than you besides."
He wasn't wrong, but guilt gnawed at her nonetheless. What did hobbit propriety mean here?
Voices echoed down the stone passage. Bella skittered further back into the shadows and slipped her ring on.
"Bella?" Thorin whispered.
"I'll find a way out," she promised before hurrying away.
What a silly hobbit she was to be worrying over bread now!
Even if. Well.
If Thorin had been a hobbit, she would have been very tempted to give him half back.
There was little enough to do in his cell but chew on the same anxieties again and again. Hoping to keep them away with busy hands, he had taken to obsessively unbraiding and rebranding the thin braided on the sides of his hair.
He had quickly regretted this decision when Bella had appeared in front of the bars, and he had reached for the ties only to find he'd misplaced them in the dark.
Or, more likely, the rats he kept hearing when he was on the edge of sleep had carried them off. He growled in frustration.
"Are you alright?" Bella asked.
"Compared to the rest of my could luck, I suppose losing a few hair ties is not so great a loss," he said wryly.
Yet perhaps it was not such a disaster after all. He hadn't been quite sure what to say after his not entirely successful offer of courtship last time.
It had been foolish of him, he knew. These were hardly ideal conditions, and she'd been quite right to put him off.
Bella was fumbling with her own carefully braided hair. "Here, you can have one of mine. I can redo my hair so I'll only need one, and - Well, you can't have the same style with only one either, but at least you can do something. Can I - ?" She reached out a hand for his hair, hesitating just before it touched.
Thorin almost said yes, almost let himself believe that this was a step forward from her previous answer. But she could not know, of course, that such a gesture was as intimate as a kiss to a dwarf, and he could not at all persuade himself that her ignorance did not matter.
"I can do it," he said hoarsely.
A king without a mountain he might be, but his honor he still had.
He wasn't interested, Bella reminded herself firmly. He had turned her down - Although, admittedly, offering to braid his hair had been rather forward. It could just be -
No. There was no point in getting carried away. He had turned her down politely but with obvious discomfort, and she would not make things worse by imagining otherwise.
It would just be a lot easier to stop imagining things if he wouldn't, say, bring her flowers.
"To cheer your sickroom," he said gruffly, presenting her with seven flowers bound in ribbon.
"Thank you! I've been doing much better really . . . " Unfortunately, this pronouncement was rather undermined by a coughing fit. The river had done her no favors.
The coughing fit went on so long that Oin came bustling in and hustled Thorin out.
When she finally got her breath back, she looked over at the flowers. Pink roses for romance -
She looked away quickly. Thorin wouldn't know the flower language of the Shire. He'd probably just grabbed whatever he could find.
Oin examined the flowers suspiciously. "Do you think these set you off again?"
"Oh, no," Bella assured him. "Hobbits almost never react badly to flowers although I've a cousin who's an exception, poor thing."
"Eh?" Oin raised his ear trumpet. "Hobbits badly to flowers?" He reached out to take them away.
Bella almost protested, but then she paused. It probably would be best if Oin took them away, so that she couldn't make a fool of herself staring at them. Oin's misconception couldn't do any real harm, and this way Thorin wouldn't get his feelings hurt.
So she smiled meekly and let Oin take her flowers away.
Thorin probably shouldn't have put his stock in decades old memories. His previous trip through the Shire one bad winter in search of work had been far more focused on the forge than on hobbit courting customs. No doubt the scraps he had picked up on were more complex than he'd realized, and he was doing this all wrong.
The best thing to do would be to set the matter aside until the quest was complete. Then he could attempt the matter properly.
He reminded himself of that firmly at the party the Master threw to see them off. No matter how Bella looked while she danced, flower strewn hair thrown back in laugher, he should leave her be.
Then she spun towards him. "Dance with me?" she asked, cheeks flushed.
Thorin's breath caught. Dwarrowdams never lacked for partners at dances; there were too few of them for it to be otherwise. For one of them to ask a specific partner to dance was . . . significant.
But of course, she was a hobbit, and they had quite as many women as men from what Thorin had seen. No doubt it meant something quite different to her.
Her face started to fall. "Surely we are at least friends enough for one dance, Thorin."
Of course. Something entirely different. He pushed down his disappointment and gravely said, "Two, even."
The return of her smile made the effort more than worth it, even considering Fili's insolent wink as they spun by.
The two dances were so wonderful that it took Bella considerable effort to keep from accepting a third. Fill and Kill had been their usual informative selves, and she'd taken the precaution of checking with Balin. The number of dances meant little to dwarves, only who did the asking.
Back in the Shire, however, three dances in a row with the same partner would be to show such a marked preference than an engagement would be assumed to be imminent.
Thorin had been quite clear when he had accepted her hand only as a friend. She wouldn't embarrass herself by acting otherwise, even if there was no one here to gossip about it. She might have ruined her reputation with this mad venture, but that was no reason to forfeit her self-respect.
So she turned the dance down, claiming exhaustion, and went to secure herself a drink.
She'd been approaching spinsterhood when she started this journey, and she'd certainly be one by the end of it. She'd accepted that.
Besides, the end could still be dragon fire. All other problems rather paled compared to that.
Most of what happened after entering the mountain was a blur, but there islands of in the hazy sea of gold. The clearest was of Bella showing him an acorn she'd kept treasured and that she planned to plant at home.
He'd been enchanted until the last part hit, and then he'd been horrified. She couldn't leave. She mustn't.
It was a different kind of madness that had him offering her the mithril coat in an entirely inappropriate way - not as a loan, but as a gift. Under the circumstances, it could only be interpreted as an engagement present.
Then they were interrupted, and Balin said all the necessary things to make the gift a practical measure.
And Thorin buried himself in the golden haze once more.
When the battle was over, his nephews healed enough that they could joke once again, and Thorin himself, though still in pain, could move more or less freely, he went to find Bella.
They had spoken before, but although both had forgiven the other, things unspoken still hung in the air.
He found her on the wall, which did not speak well for his hopes.
"Gandalf has offered to take me home," she said quietly. "If we go soon, Beorn will accompany us part of the way."
"I am sure you will travel safely then," Thorin said hoarsely.
"Yes. Well." Her shoulders hunched a little. "I'm sure that lovely mithril shirt you gave me will help with that too. Unless you want it back?"
"It's yours," he said firmly. "And whatever else you care to take. I should never have said otherwise."
Bella nodded, biting her lip. "Thank you." She turned as if to go, but she stopped and turned back, her eyes blazing with the same stubborn courage he had first admired in her. "I know you weren't in your right mind when you offered it. But if Balin hadn't come - If you had been in your right mind - Would you ever have offered it anyway?"
Thorin felt as if he had been turned back to the stone Durin had came from. He had to force his mouth open. "You knew?"
Bella blinked. "Of course I did. I'm sure I'm no expert, but I was rather well read even before this whole quest started, and between Bombur and Gloin's stories and Balin's kind attempts to make sure your nephews didn't trick me into some mischief, I'd like to think that I at least know the basics."
"So the offer to braid my hair . . . the dance . . . "
Bella blushed bright red. "I was being a bit forward, I know, but all things considered, I think it's understandable."
"I thought you didn't realize - but you didn't share the bread!"
"The bread?" Bella's mouth dropped open. "Then the flowers, the dances . . . You did know! It seemed so odd, but I couldn't imagine where you could have learned about hobbit courting customs."
"I spent a winter there once." A stunned laugh escaped him. "It seems we have been working at impressive cross purposes." Things had changed since then, of course, but Thorin was King under the Mountain now, and so he had the confidence to say what he did next. "In plain speech then, so there is no chance of miscommunications. Will you stay at the mountain that I might have the chance to court you properly?"
"I would be delighted," Bella said firmly, and this time both dwarf and hobbit knew was meant.