Sorry this took so long, tests and family had life busy.
Unfortunately, the next chapter may take a similar amount of time do to for about the same reasons, though hopefully not.
Bilbo Baggins was an enigma. That was really the only way to go about it.
Thorin had expected either fainting or joyfully shock (he had hoped for passionately shocked with a side of lust, but that was another matter) from his burglar. He had gotten a door in the face and an all night snubbing. Now, he was honestly surprised to be welcomed in at all.
Bilbo had continued to regard him coolly, his body language screaming, "don't touch me" so loudly even he could see it. As hard as it was not to reach out and gather his lover against him, he complied. Though he was sure the effort showed through with a frustrated frown lingering on his lips.
"I want pie."
"Pie?" Thorin returned, raising one thick eyebrow in question.
Bilbo's eyes darted across the table, everywhere but on Thorin, his mouth tightening into a thin line. He harrumphed and stood up in a smooth, albeit stiff motion.
"Bilbo?"
The hobbit didn't reply, just hustled out of the room and down the hall. The strangest part of it was that the normally quiet man could now be heard noisily rooting around in his food storage. Bowls and plates were moved, set down hard, shuffled, and erratically emptied. When he returned with an armful of apples and other various ingredients, the former King Under the Mountain was regarding him with raised brows. Bilbo paid him no heed.
"So... Apple pie then?" he asked.
The Halfling only grunted offhandedly before half throwing the food on the table.
"Are you feeling well...?" Thorin wasn't sure if that was the best question to be asking him, but he was rather unwilling to leave the table to check on him physically either.
"I've been better," Was the reply as Bilbo began the single most violent making of a piecrust he had ever witnessed. He half expected the flour to scream for mercy.
"Surely my presence here isn't that distressing..."
Bilbo practically threw a handful of flour at the table, splattering the front of his shirt in a dusting of white. "No, it's very distressing," he half laughed. He withdrew a rolling pin from a drawer and slapped a ball of dough on the flour-covered counter.
"Why? Surely the initial shock was hard, but this..." Thorin swallowed and hesitated, eyeing the rolling pin. Honestly, that was making him nervous? Trolls, a dragon, the Pale Orc and it was a crazed Halfling with a rolling pin that gave him pause? "I'm alive, Bilbo, and I am here."
"No, you are dead." Bilbo grunted, half beating the dough ball until it flattened beneath his brutal attack. "You've been dead since I left Erebor and I've been mourning since I walked into that forsaken tent!"
"I'm sorry, I-"
"Oh, I am sure you are!" The hobbit shot back with a short laugh. "Well fat lot of good that does me!" The rolling pin was moving furiously over the counter, his curls bouncing along with the motion. "I'm still mourning. That's not going to just go away because you show up all blue eyes and-and lovely hair and all of your usual handsome nonsense! I love you Thorin, and that makes this so much harder for me."
Despite the tone, Thorin found himself smiling at those words. The last time he had heard them, he had been near delirious with pain. To hear them now, Bilbo 's apparent annoyance aside, brought a warmth to his belly he found he'd been lacking.
"Don't look so pleased with yourself." Bilbo grumbled, arranging the dough in the pie pan he'd brought out.
"I love you Bilbo."
The hobbit grunted in acceptance and moved on to the process of chopping the apples and mixing them with brown sugar, some butter, and several spices Thorin could only identify as "brown and thoroughly ground up."
Due to both the proximity of the knives and the almost comfortable silence the pair had drifted into, Thorin contented himself with watching from the table. Bilbo threw the pie together with obvious practiced ease, never pausing to consider some ingredient or the next step. He just poured the filling in, tucked a layer of dough across the top, and pricked little slits in the surface.
"It looks... Good." He remarked, not entirely sure how else one could complement a yet unbaked dessert.
Bilbo once again grunted offhandedly, like he wasn't entirely listening or didn't particularly care to answer the other man. His thoughts looked entirely focused on his baking as he opened the oven door and slid the pie into the heat.
"Should be done soon, I hope." Thorin tried again, now searching desperately to secure the hobbit in conversation despite this icy treatment he was receiving. "It's been a long while since my last taste of such a dessert."
Bilbo gave no response, only dusted a little bit of the flour off of his already dirty shirt, and strode from the room with a purpose. Thorin heard him shuffle around in a nearby room followed shortly after by the sound of the front door opening and closing. For a moment, he allowed himself the childish sense of jealousy that came with being utterly ignored.
Thorin found himself with two choices then: brood in the house, refusing to acknowledge Bilbo as he was currently doing to the dwarf, or follow the hobbit and bar him a moments peace. He wrestled with the choice for a few minutes, thinking that perhaps Bilbo really just needed a little more time alone. Then again, he had just spent the better part of a half hour being treated like a spider in the highest corner of a ceiling that no broom was quite tall enough to get, so you were forced to sit there and glower at it helplessly. He didn't like it.
Finally coming to a decision, the former King rose from his seat and stepped toward the front door, telling himself it was to merely check on Bilbo, assuming the Hobbit hadn't just left Bag End entirely without so much as a by your leave, that is.
Swinging the door open, Thorin found his burglar sitting exactly where he had been only a short time ago; rear end planted on a fine little bench just behind the gate, puffing out little smoke rings. The sight made him pause in the doorway for a moment. Words floated across his memory, a sorrowful voice that had once painted an image in his mind.
"I have a little bench just beyond the garden, you know. Wonderful for sitting and just watching the day go by... It's f-funny..." Bilbo's words hitched and he paused to squeeze several tears from his eyes, pressing his free hand to his mouth. Taking a deep breath, he continued, voice shaking, but steadier than before. "It's funny, but that was where I was when Gandalf found me. When he decided to drag me off on this mad adventure."
Thorin makes a soft sound, only a noise of affirmation that he's heard. He can do little else now. He's lucky that he can even still listen to the Halfling, his vision is swimming in black and his eyes are threatening to close. He gives another horrid, wet cough that leaves his lungs burning. The small hand in his clenches desperately at his fingers.
"W-When you're well... When we return to the Shire, we'll sit out there, puffing on our pipes. None of that stuff you use though, just some good Old Toby pipeweed..."
Whatever resentment may have been building up within him at Bilbo's attitude that day melted away. There was something akin to an ache in Thorin's heart now, a longing for the domestic scene that the hobbit had described to him on his deathbed.
Pushing the round door shut behind him, he moved down the stone steps and toward the little bench. Whether or not Bilbo had done it purposely or not, one side of the bench was clear for him to sit, the space between them broken only by a pouch of what he could only assume was Old Toby. Thorin settled down without waiting for permission, as Bilbo still seemed content to disregard his presence.
Retrieving his pipe from a small pouch at his side, Thorin glanced down the hill. Admittedly, his eyesight had been better in years passed, but he was fairly certain he saw a tiny hobbit child peering at him with wide eyes around a fence. When the fauntling caught his returning stare, he ducked away and scurried back out of sight. His lips twitched upward briefly in amusement and he turned to glance at his partner, though it didn't look as if Bilbo had seen.
"Old Toby..." Thorin murmured after a moment, tapping his pipe on his boot to empty it of its contents.
"Hm." Was the response, which was admittedly better than nothing.
"You used to brag of it often." The dwarf continued expectantly.
As he'd hoped, Bilbo popped the stem of his pipe from his lips and gestured at the pack by his side with it.
Thorin gave a small nod and picked up the pouch, glad to have something to do with his hands for even a moment as he filled and lit his own pipe.
"Subtle." He commented after a moment, blowing out a smoke ring that collided with the one Bilbo had just puffed out himself.
Finally, the Halfling looked at him, his eyes suddenly zooming into focus on the dwarf beside him. "Yes..." he breathed, brows pulling together in thought. "Compared to what you're used to, it is." Bilbo's eyes searched his in a way that seemed that he was finally seeing Thorin for the first time since he had come. "You're welcome to as much as you'd like. What's mine is yours, I suppose," he murmured.
In spite of himself, Thorin reached out and squeezed Bilbo's leg, hoping to ease that pained, haunted look the Halfling was giving him. "And what little I have left is yours." He returned.
Bilbo gave him a small smile, looking like he might cry. "Right then," he said, turning his eyes away again as he placed the stem of his pipe between his lips once more.
Thorin caught sight of the hobbit's other hand rising to fiddle with a blue and silver ring on a chain at his neck. He gave Bilbo's leg another affectionate squeeze before he turned away himself, smiling around his pipe.
This chapter turned out to be kind of a necessary filler piece.
I gotta say, it was fun though.
Once again, this whole story was meant to be like two chapters of vague plot and then about six of fluff pieces. The plot continues to expand because I am accidentally dragging it out longer. Sorry, hope no one minds too much!