"What the fuck do you want from me?"
"Can´t you talk?"
"Leave me the fuck alone!"
It´s been several days since he was caught and then dragged into this stinky cell. A day right after his capture, he met a small, young looking man. He sat in front of Thorin´s cell for hours. Not talking, not moving, just looking. At first Thorin was yelling at him, calling him names, threatening, but it did nothing to change the little man´s posture. Sometimes he started coughing and left immediately after that.
Thorin decided to ignore him. If he didn´t wanna talk or react at all, it was his choice. But not a day passed without his visit. Sometimes he came early in the morning, sometimes he took his time. There were occasions when he left only after couple minutes and others when he didn´t leave his place for a whole day.
One day Thorin woke up to the pair of hazel eyes already watching him.
"Jesus Christ! What kind of creep watches someone in their sleep?" Unsurprisingly, he got no answer only the well-known steady glare.
After many attempts to make him leave or speak, Thorin resigned. Every time the man came to sit near his cell, he sat opposite him and returned the glare. Thorin always thought himself excellent at it, there were some who ran away just after few seconds, but something in this young man drained the power out of it and Thorin found himself unable to blankly stare at him. It was as if he finally saw him. The slightly messed golden curls that jumped around his head every time he caughed. His nose was small and a little wider, he had thin, pink lips and cheeks colored into a strawberry red. What he noticed almost instantly were his big ears with its tips peeking out of his hair. They weren´t the usual type of big ears. One could say they were almost pointy. The man was small, which was clear every time he stood up, and a little plump with short hands. Another extraordinary thing about him were his feet. They were definitely too big for a man his size, as if they didn´t belong to him at all, but somehow all these odd features fit perfectly together.
Tonight his visitor was uncharastically fidgeting and was hiding something behind his back. He never brought anything with him so Thorin was beginning to feel suspicious. More than usually, so to say.
"What is it you´ve got there?" The man only looked away shyly.
"Well? What is it? Clearly, you wanna show me. Either show it or go away." He looked hesitantly at Thorin again, but then pulled out a small box. Thorin leaned forward and peaked inside it. What he saw was definitely not what he had expected. A piece of blueberry cake. He looked at the man, frowning.
"You want me to eat it?"
The young man nodded encouragingly at him and pushed the box through the cell bars.
"If you wanted to poison me, you could have done it much sooner and not play this game."
Thorin stood up and walked slowly to the bars. His eyes never left the other man´s while sitting down and taking a bite of the cake. Within a second his mouth was filled with such a delicious taste he hadn´t felt in years.
"Fucking hell, this is delicious! Where did you get it?"
The man smiled brightly at him and what a smile it was. His whole face changed and he shined as if he was just told, he won in a lottery. It was the most beautiful smile Thorin had ever seen. And that was a very dangerous thought.
Since that day, Thorin started getting more cakes, pies or scones and every new one was even better than the one before. On some days Thorin would talk and on others they would sit in silence, except for the occasional coughing, watching each other closely.
"If you keep bringing me these, I´ll start thinking you wanna get me fat, so you could cook and eat me."
This earned him a laugh and Thorin tried not to dwell on how much he enjoyed the sight of it.
"I know I asked this before, but it wasn´t really a question then. So uh… CAN you talk? Or is it just that you don´t want to…."
He shaked his head so Thorin continued.
"So you can´t. But you understand what I´m saying." It wasn´t a question, but he received a nod anyway.
"Is there a way how you communicate with people? When you wanna say something, I´m sure you have to sometimes."
He got a nod again.
"Okay… so uhm.. is there anything you wanna say to me?"
The man suddenly smiled widely and started nodding so quickly that it surprised Thorin.
"Well then uhm… go on."
The man pulled out a small notebook and a riddiculously tiny pencil. Then he wrote something quickly and shoved it in Thorin´s face.
My name is Bilbo.
He kept smiling and was waiting for Thorin to respond.
"Uh… nice to meet you, Bilbo." Thorin couldn´t but grin back at the smiling face.
"I´m Thorin, but I´m sure you know that."
Yes
It was a simple conversation. Thorin found out that Bilbo lost his voice in an accident when he was young. He learned signing, but didn´t like it much when people used it at him. He wasn´t deaf after all. Bilbo was all friendly and open, only when Thorin asked about the coughing, he would shake his head quickly and stood up to leave.
"No! No, wait. Bilbo, stop. I´m sorry, okay? I won´t ask about it again. I promise."
He hated the look Bilbo had after he coughed, like he was doing something forbidden. And when he was aked about it, he looked terrified. Thorin wanted nothing else than to hold him and convince him, he could trust him. But who was he kidding. He was a prisoner and Bilbo was his capturer´s son.
Yeah, he didn´t tell him that directly, but didn´t try to hide it either. As if this situation couldn´t get any worse. But it did.
Thorin was falling for Bilbo. He was clever, kind and beautiful, with a very unusual sense of humor. At the beginning Thorin didn´t understand it, but now it took all his power to stop laughing sometimes.
And then, when Bilbo smiled at him, his heart would swell and he would see it in his dreams which weren´t all completely innocent to be honest.
They were sitting with their backs against the wall with the bars separating them as always. Bilbo was playing with Thorin´s fingers again. He would spend hours just tracing them with his own, comparing them.
I like your hands
"Oh really? I haven´t noticed." That earned him a hit in the shoulder, but Bilbo put their entwined hands to his chest. Suddenly, he froze and turned away from Thorin who knew what this meant. Even before his hand was roughly pushed away, he could feel the rumbling in Bilbo´s chest.
"Hey, it´s alright. Look at me."
Something broke in him every time he saw Bilbo´s face after an coughing attack. He was always so cheerful except for those short moments.
"You don´t have to turn away from me, Bilbo." He lifted his hand to the smooth face and when he felt Bilbo lean into it, how could someone ask him to resist. He traced gently his cheeks, then around the his eyes before he pushed his fingers into the beautiful mess of soft curls.
Bilbo turned back to him a bore his big eyes into Thorin´s. Thorin suddenly felt like the air from the cell vanished completely. As if it was pushed out of his lungs too by the never-ending hazel abbbys he was losing himself in.
He was so beautiful and so close. Thorin did all he could not to lean closer to the bars and bring Bilbo´s lips to his. Or maybe he didn´t even try. They were so soft, just like he imagined. And if someone asked him in that moment, where he was or what was his name, he wouldn´t know it. But what he did know was that he was completely lost.
After that their meetings, as Bilbo called them, changed. They exchanged more kisses and even the small touches through the bars felt more intimate, even though they were little different from those before. Sometimes they would fall asleep together, holding hands through the bars. If someone had told Thorin this before, he would probably laugh at them and then put a bullet in their head. But he didn´t care anymore. All he cared about was to make Bilbo smile, kiss him and touch him. But the coughing worried him since it wasn´t getting better. The opposite actually.
He could see how Bilbo looked more tired day after day. They always shared what he brought, which Thorin learned was Bilbo´s own baking. But he was getting thinner and Thorin could do nothing about it. The question was burning his tongue for weeks, but after the initial response, he was still afraid to ask it again. But after what happened one morning, he had no other choice.
They fell asleep next to each other as many times before, but only this time, Bilbo didn´t wake up in the morning. Thorin was shaking him, yelling at him, breathing into him until finally, those hazel eyes looked at him again. He was confused and desoriented at first, but after few quite hysterical moments on Thorin´s side, he got the picture of what had happened.
"Bilbo, I know you don´t wanna talk about it, but you have to tell me! I can´t wake up to you looking…. dead, again. I just can´t."
It was obvious Bilbo still didn´t want to talk about it. Thorin brought him as close to him as the bars allowed it.
I´m sick. My lungs are weak. I´ve been to every doctor my father could find and they all said I had about a year to live. It was 3 years ago and I´m still here. And-
He paused in his writing to look at Thorin.
"And what?"
And I feel like I´ve been dead the whole time and started living only 4 months ago. When I met you
Thorin wanted to tell him so much. He was bursting with feelings unknown to him till now, but now it was him, who couldn´t speak. So he lifted Bilbo´s chin and gave him a long, lingering kiss.
"I´ll breathe for both of us. You are the beat of my heart, so I´ll be the air you need."
When Bilbo came next time, he brought an extra big pie with him.
His state was getting worse quickly. There were days when he didn´t come and when he did, he looked exhausted. Thorin held him and talked to him, but he wished he could do more.
And then one time, Bilbo didn´t show up for three days. Four. Five. It turned into a week and Thorin became extremely worried that he´ll never see him again.
At the beginning of a second week of Bilbo´s disappearance, Thorin got other visitors. The guards led him somewhere above the prison and then to an enormous room filled with paintings and other decorations. There in the middle sat and older man, his capturer. Bilbo´s father.
"I heard my son grew quite fond of you, is that right?"
Thorin thought it would be best to keep silent till he knew what they wanted with him.
"Hm. I knew he visited you sometimes-"
Sometimes? He clearly didn´t know how quiet and sneaky his son was.
"- and I didn´t like it. But my son has his own mind and can make quite a scene even without a voice."
He looked then at Thorin expectantly, but didn´t wait for reactiong for long.
"He´s sick and recently it… it got worse. He doesn´t have much time now and he asked me as a…" he paused and swallowed with trouble.
"as a dying wish to bring you to him. Normally I would decline, of course, but…" he sighed and looked at the guards.
"Take him to my son´s room. And you! Don´t even try to escape. There´s no way you´d get out of here alive."
Thorin didn´t listen anymore. His head was spinning. Bilbo was dying, yes, he already knew that, but this was too quick, too sudden. Too real.
They brought him into Bilbo´s room. He was lying motionlessly in his bed, looking pale and sick. But when he saw Thorin, his face broke into a smile. That smile. Thorin was by his side in no time, taking his hand in his. Bilbo was looking at him and smiling. The ever present sparkle in his eyes was shining as bright as ever. But his breath was shallow and weak. He turned to the nightstand and took out the notebook.
Glad you´re here.
"Your father sent for me."
Know. Told him. Begged him.
"When you didn´t come I thought…."
Had to say goodbye
Thorin smiled bitterly.
"You know I hate goodbyes."
Would you prefer I didn´t make them send for you?
"No! No…. Ah Bilbo."
Again words failed him. Bilbo put his hand on his cheek and brought their foreheads together. This gesture always seemed to calm Thorin down, but tonight it didn´t work as it should have.
"Please, don´t leave me, Bilbo. We could escape from here. It would be just you and me. I´d protect you. Just… just hold on."
At this moment, Bilbo´s face was wet from tears.
"I love you. You are my little burglar."
Bilbo put his own hand on his chest, drew a heart there and then put his palm over Thorin´s heart.
"Beat of my heart." Thorin whispered to his lips. They shared their last kiss before the guards dragged him away, kicking and screaming.
The following days were a blur. He didn´t know if he was awake or sleeping. Days didn´t seem to end or start.
One day they finally came for him. He was thrown on a rocky ground in the backyard. This was the end. When they were leading him from the cell, he saw black flag hanging from the window. And that was when his heart stopped. When the bullet went through his head, the beat of his heart was already gone.