They needn't have feared for Frodo's virgin ears that night. It had been a long day. Between the disastrous trip to the market, Dwalin and Bilbo's fight, Thorin's evening at the forge and consequent romp with Bilbo (and Bilbo's resulting soreness), in addition to all the emotional turmoil of the day, neither of them was feeling particularly amorous. Instead, they crawled into bed, not bothering to dress after their baths, and lay together. Both of them drawing reassurance that things would work out from the feeling of the other's warm body just being there. That night it was not fluids that were exchanged between them, but something much more intangible but no less special: comfort.
The next morning found them as many others had, Thorin on his back with Bilbo curled up against his side and his head on the dwarf's chest. The dwarf smiled. It seemed that no matter how they fell asleep this was how they always ended up. He took the hand that wasn't pinned by Bilbo and brushed the hobbit's longish curls away from his face. He still couldn't believe that it had been sixty years. Bilbo looked just the same as he had the last time that they had woken up together. His hair was still longer than it had been the first time that they had met (more the length that it had grown to during the quest) and in sleep, the sadness was gone from his face. If it wasn't for the round windows and hobbit-sized furniture, Thorin could have almost convinced himself that they were in Laketown.
He stroked the hobbit again and was rewarded by a contented sound in his throat and Bilbo moving closer, though Thorin hadn't thought that it was possible. The dwarf was suddenly glad that they weren't in Laketown. Even there, mornings had come early and there had been no time for lazing in bed. He had woken Bilbo as soon as the sun was up and they had begun the day. He enjoyed being able to stay in bed and watch his hobbit sleep. He smiled down fondly at Bilbo as his fingers threaded through his curls and he wondered idly how the hobbit would react to waking with courting braids in his hair once more. Almost as soon as the thought had crossed his mind, he received his answer.
"Thorin Oakenshild," Bilbo muttered sleepily, his hazel eyes still closed, "if you are putting braids in my hair I swear that I will bite you."
"I have done nothing of the sort," Thorin replied, with a small laugh. "Not yet at any rate. Though if you continue to sleep . . ."
"I will not consent to being braided," Bilbo said opening an eye and glaring up at the dwarf. "Not again."
"On the quest—"
"That was different," Bilbo argued. "It only made sense to allow you to braid my hair out of my eyes. I didn't want to die, after all. There is no such danger in the Shire. You will not braid my hair."
"What if it was only a little braid? Not very intricate with only one little blue bead?" Thorin asked attempting to reach a compromise. He hadn't realized it before Bilbo had forbade it, but he missed seeing Bilbo wearing his braids where everyone could see them and know what they meant. He missed having Bilbo marked as his.
"I said no," Bilbo replied his voice hard. He didn't understand why Thorin was being so pushy with the braids. He knew that the dwarf had always loved his hair and knew what braids meant to them. He also knew that he didn't want a braid. He wasn't sure why, but some deep part of him rebelled against the thought of being marked in such a fashion. It almost didn't sound like his voice, but he knew that it had to be. Who else would be in his head? Perhaps it was the long-suppressed Baggins side of his personality refusing to give up the last thing that truly made him a hobbit, the last shred of his respectability—which had admittedly been lost the night before but would only be further tarnished when he stepped out of the house in braids.
"Not even—"
"Why are you insisting on this!?" Bilbo snapped, sitting up to glare at the dwarf. Thorin flinched at the anger and madness there. Especially over so little a thing as a braid. He didn't understand why a braid would cause the madness to flare but he instantly regretted bringing it up. He would remember to avoid the topic of braids in the future. He wouldn't do anything to exacerbate the situation and speed Bilbo's final descent into madness.
"Hush," he whispered, pulling the struggling hobbit against him and fighting back tears once more. This was too much. "Hush. I am sorry. So sorry. I won't bring it up again. I didn't mean to upset you. I'm so very sorry."
He wasn't actually apologizing for the braid topic, but rather for the fact that Bilbo was losing his mind and there was nothing that he could do to help him. His thoughts the night before came flooding back to him and he realized that perhaps this was the Valar's goal. He had never heard of them being cruel, but it would make sense. Punish Thorin by making him believe that he was going to get everything that he ever wanted, keep Bilbo the same to make it all the more realistic, but delay their meeting by sixty years so that Bilbo had already gone mad from his grief and leave Thorin to deal with the consequences of his actions. It was cruel and such a fit punishment. It all added up. This was his punishment for the pain he had caused in his life.
As Bilbo began to calm once more, he realized that he had hurt Thorin's feelings. The dwarf hadn't said anything, but it was there. In the stiffness of his arms, the harshness of his breathing. Bilbo had hurt him, over nothing. His respectability had been gone for sixty years. What was a braid going to do to it that going on an adventure and bedding a dwarf hadn't already? He was being irrational again. It worried him. This had never happened before, only since Thorin had returned. Why was he reacting this way?
"I did it again, didn't I?" Bilbo asked suddenly, his voice small and frightened. "Lost myself over nothing."
"You did," Thorin agreed allowing Bilbo to move away from him now that it was clear that he was back to normal. His tear-filled hazel eyes were also filled with fear and confusion.
"I'm sorry," Bilbo cried his voice so helpless and small that Thorin wanted to scream his frustration to the heavens. "I don't know . . . Thorin, what's wrong with me? I don't understand it. Such little things, Dwalin, the hobbits in the market, and now a braid! A braid of all things! There's nothing wrong with braids. I wore them for months! You've worn them for years. Why would a braid upset me? What's wrong with me?"
As he looked into Bilbo's eyes, so full of despair and yet hope that Thorin could fix it, the dwarf felt his heart break. He pulled his hobbit to him with a hard swallow, trying to fight back his own tears and failing. This was too cruel. It was too much. It might be less than he deserved, but he couldn't bear this. There had to be a way to help Bilbo overcome the madness. He couldn't bear to watch him dragged into it kicking and screaming. His pain gave him determination. Bilbo would not succumb to this if he could do anything about it. He had watched his grandfather, and then his father taken by it. He himself had given in, but it would not happen to Bilbo. Bilbo would not be lost to it.
He pulled back to look at Bilbo, pity in his eyes. The hobbit looked up at him, surprise filling his eyes as he realized that Thorin knew what was wrong with him. He knew and he wouldn't tell. Suddenly rage was back. He wasn't sure where it had come from, but it was there and thirsting for blood. Be it physical or emotional, it didn't care. It wanted to see pain. And with Thorin, Bilbo knew how to cause it.
"You know, don't you?" Bilbo demanded harshly crawling out of bed to glare down at the dwarf. "YOU KNOW! You know and you won't tell me! Why won't you tell me?"
"Do you truly want to know?" Thorin asked quietly. "I can tell you but I do not believe that you will like the answer."
"Tell me," Bilbo hissed, his face inches from Thorin's and his eyes wide with that feral light shining within them. "Tell me what's wrong with me."
"It's madness," Thorin said, emotion choking the words. Somehow saying them aloud made the situation all the more real. Bilbo was going mad. "You're losing your mind."
"Madness?" Bilbo spat. "Just like what affected you?"
"No," Thorin argued. "This isn't gold-madness. But it is madness. I've seen enough of it in my lifetime to recognize it. When it hits you, you are not yourself. You lose yourself to the anger, just as I did."
"Just as you did?" Bilbo snapped all of his anger and unresolved resentment coming to the surface. He may be losing control of himself, but he still had all his memories and his sharp tongue—only made sharper by the lack of scruples the madness brought. The madness saw its opportunity to cause pain and it took it.
"Tell me," Bilbo said his tone conversational, his head tilted and a cruel smile on his face, "If I was to try to kill you in one of these bouts of madness, what would you do? Would you let me, as I almost let you? Not that I really had a choice. I couldn't win against you. I never stood a chance. If Gandalf hadn't have interfered you would have succeeded. I could have begged you, but it wouldn't have worked. I would have died, my pleas in your ears and my screams the last thing you heard. I would have died knowing that you had taken my life."
"Stop this!" Thorin snapped his heart breaking at the thought of that outcome. He knew that it wasn't actually Bilbo saying such cruel things to him, but it looked like him, sounded like him. He also knew that the thoughts had to be there for the madness to bring them out. Bilbo had thought through this before. And it was his fault that he had it to think through. That thought hurt almost more than the words.
"Did you know that I had bruises for nearly a month from where you grabbed me?" Bilbo asked his voice deceptively calm and the same cruel light in his eyes. "That the next day, during the battle, my arms ached so much where you had held them to shake me that I could barely use my sword? If it wasn't for my Ring I never would have survived. I would have died because of what you did to me."
"Please, Bilbo, stop this!" Thorin pleaded, his breath coming in pants as the hobbit's words tore at his already fragile soul. He had known that he had to have left bruises on Bilbo but he didn't realize that they had been so bad. He had never touched his hobbit that way before that day. He had always known that if he was not careful he would break Bilbo, with his small bones and thin skin, and so he had always been careful. To know that his treatment of Bilbo had almost resulted in his death not once by twice . . . it was too much.
"Not until you answer my questions!" Bilbo replied the sharp tone back. "Did you know and would you let me do it?"
"I knew," Thorin answered figuring that since pleading with him was not working perhaps giving him what he wanted would snap him out of it. "Not how long they lasted or how bad they were, but I knew there would be bruises. At the time I enjoyed knowing that I had caused them. That you would suffer at least a little for the betrayal you had committed against me. I regretted them almost instantly. I should never have done it. You meant me no harm."
"And the other question," Bilbo demanded, his smile widening at the sadness in Thorin's tone. "Would you let me take your life?"
"There is nothing for you to take, my burglar," Thorin replied with a sad, loving smile. "My life is yours to do with as you will." He bent to retrieve Sting from the top of the chest at the foot of the bed and unsheathed it before handing it hilt first to Bilbo and tilting his head and moving his hair to bear his throat for the hobbit's blade.
"If my death would please you," Thorin said his voice little more than a whisper as he looked at the hobbit levelly, "I will not resist you. Kill me. Kill me if that's what you want." Bilbo eyed his throat hungrily and for a moment, Thorin thought that he might do it, but then the feral light faded and his Bilbo was back, staring at him with horror in his eyes.
The sword clattered to the ground where Bilbo stood staring at it as though it were a viper. He was gasping for air and sobbing. With a loud cry of anguish he sank to his knees. Thorin moved from the bed to kneel beside him and tried to draw Bilbo into an embrace. When the hobbit resisted, Thorin didn't press him. Instead he sat there and waited for Bilbo to calm.
"Would you actually have let me do it?" Bilbo asked eventually, his voice hoarse from his cries and his hazel eyes filled with pain. "Would you have let me kill you?"
"Yes," Throin replied. "You are the only person in this world that I have wronged as much as I have you. Even what happened to Dís was not truly as bad. I owe you my life, both for you having saved it and for almost taking yours in a fit of rage. If you truly desired my life, you could have it."
"No!" Bilbo snapped, anger but not madness in the word. His eyes were still his own. "You are not to think like that, Thorin Oakenshield! I'm not allowed to kill you! And if I do try, in one of those fits of . . . madness" he shuddered at the word, "you are to stop me. I know that you can. You can stop me without even hurting me. You're infinitely stronger than I am and you are to do it! If I try to kill you, STOP ME!"
"Bilbo—"
"Don't you 'Bilbo' me!" the hobbit snapped. "I don't want you dead. Not the me me. I have wanted you alive and beside me for more than sixty years. Please," here his voice became softer and his eyes filled with tears once more, "Please don't allow me to take your life. I couldn't live with myself if I did it. Promise me that you won't let me do it."
Thorin sighed but said nothing. He wanted to make that promise, he did, but . . . death was such an appealing option at this point. Life was so hard, painful even. He had made too many mistakes, caused too much pain. It would just be easier if . . .
"Thorin," Bilbo growled, grabbing the dwarf's chin and forcing him to look at him, "don't even think about it. You do not get to die on me. Not again. Not this time. I understand it. I really do. When you died I wanted to follow you . . . but I didn't and you managed to follow me. Don't throw it away. What happened to the stubborn dwarf that led a rag-tag band of misfits on a quest to reclaim a mountain from a dragon despite the odds against him?"
As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them. Thorin had shown rather suicidal tendencies on the quest and reminding him of them now would probably not be good. With a cynical laugh Bilbo realized that Thorin actually had very poor self-preservation instincts, between his stunt on the mountain side, to the idiotic exploit with Azog, and the war he got them involved in. It was a miracle that he had lived as long as he did if that was the kind of behavior he had habitually engaged in. Thorin, who extensively planned most things, had a very bad habit of letting his body act of its own accord when his emotions rose or others needed protecting. His mind brought forward a vivid memory of Fíli and Kíli diving into a swollen river after ponies and nearly drowning in the process and he amended his thought. It wasn't a trait singular to Thorin but shared in the entire line of Durin. It was no wonder that so few of them survived to old age. But Thorin missed Bilbo's dark bit of reasoning.
"I did, didn't I?" Thorin asked with a laugh. "And I made my way out of death itself to be with you. It would be foolish of me to give it up. I promise you, Bilbo, I will not allow you to kill me, even in one of your fits of rage. Nothing will separate us, not even ourselves."
Bilbo nodded, hearing the determination in Thorin's words and knowing that he meant them. And now that Thorin was determined to survive, Bilbo could turn to other matters.
"About what I said earlier," Bilbo began, "I just want to say—"
"Don't," Thorin replied, placing a hand on Bilbo's cheek. "You don't have to apologize. It wasn't actually you who said it. It was the madness talking. At any rate, even had you been the one to say them you wouldn't need to apologize. I was the one who . . . who . . . who tried to kill you." His last words sounded strangled as he had forced them past his lips. "For that, I deserve any harsh words you have for me. I know that I can never make it up to you however—"
"Stop," Bilbo said gently, placing a finger over Thorin's lips to silence him. "Stop. I have heard all of this before. I have no desire to hear it again. I would not punish you forever for what you did. I won't tell you that it didn't hurt, both physically and emotionally, but . . . we can't keep going back to it. I know that this time I was the one that brought it up, but . . . we both need to move on."
"How can you—" Bilbo silenced the dwarf with a gentle kiss. When he pulled back a gentle smile was on his face.
"If you can agree to let me kill you when I'm in a fit of madness, I think that I can forgive you for trying to kill me when you were in one, don't you?" Bilbo said, his smile still in place. "Now come, let's get your braids back in. A king—"
"Ex-King," Thorin corrected with a smile of his own.
"Either way," Bilbo continued his smile only widening, "the great Thorin Oakenshield of the line of Durin can't be seen in public without his hair properly dressed. Even if he is only going to work as a blacksmith." Thorin laughed and moved back to the bed as Bilbo began the process of redoing all of Thorin's various braids. Once he was done, he reached timidly into a drawer beside his bed.
"No, Bilbo," Thorin said with a laugh, thinking that he knew exactly what Bilbo had just done. They had just had a fight, then expressed tenderness, Bilbo was probably expecting that sex would follow, but it wouldn't. Not for a few days at any rate.
"'No' what, Thorin," Bilbo replied, laughter in his eyes as he saw the hunger beginning to burn in Thorin's blue eyes. He may be saying no, but he didn't actually mean it. The hobbit knew that dwarf thought that he had oil hidden in his bedside table and that Bilbo was about to seduce him, but Bilbo had a feeling that Thorin would like what was actually in his hand even more.
"You're saying no and you don't even know what I want," Bilbo quipped, his hazel eyes alight with mischief.
"I think I know," Thorin replied playfully nuzzling the side of Bilbo's neck. "I think I know exactly what it is you want, Bilbo Baggins. You may think that you are inscrutable but to me you are an open book."
"Fine," Bilbo laughed, pushing the dwarf away. He hadn't seen this side of Thorin before and found that he liked it. "If that's true and you know me so well, what have I got in my hand?"
"Riddles?" Thorin asked, remembering when Bilbo had returned to them having asked the Gollum creature the same question . . . or near enough.
"Nearly," Bilbo replied. "This is not a true riddle. But we could make a game of it if you'd like. How should we do it?"
"I ask for the same chance you gave the creature," Thorin countered. "I get three guesses."
"And if you fail?" Bilbo purred, leaning in in an attempt to fluster the dwarf and only managing to fluster himself. The smell that was Thorin filed his nostrils and clouded his mind. He may not have intended to seduce the dwarf but it might just have to happen.
"If I fail," Thorin said with a grin that did unholy things to Bilbo, encouraging his already swirling hormones," in two days you may have your way with me. I will submit to you entirely." Bilbo dug his nails into his palm to attempt to hide the way the words affected him, though he couldn't entirely hide his interest in them since they were both still naked.
"And if you win?" the hobbit asked, cursing his own breathlessness. He felt that he already knew the answer, but he needed to hear it. And at the same time he wasn't sure that he could stand to hear it.
"If I win," Thorin whispered, leaning in so that his beard tickled the hobbit's ear, "in two day I get to have my way with you. And I believe that deep down, despite your competitive nature, you want me to win." Bilbo swallowed at the words. Oh did he want Thorin to win. He was almost disappointed that he knew his lover would fail.
"I accept your terms," Bilbo replied, trying to control his voice. "Now . . . what have I got in my hand?"
Thorin thought about it. He had originally thought that it was oil, but Bilbo's hand was too small to close completely around a vial of oil and still be as closed as tightly as it was. Whatever was in his hand was smaller than a vial of oil, and something that he would keep in a drawer . . .
"We don't have all day," Bilbo reminded him, his voice annoyingly bright. "You have a job to get to and I have a party to plan." Thorin growled. He couldn't think of it. It wasn't oil, and it had made Bilbo nervous. What was small enough to fit inside the hobbit's hand completely that would make him nervous so soon after . . . he had it!
"A bead," Thorin said triumphantly. "You have a bead in your hand. You were going to ask me to braid your hair." Bilbo laughed in shock, he hadn't expected Thorin to guess it. Especially not after their fight that morning about braids and beads. He opened his hand and nestled in his palm was a blue bead made of glass. Thorin picked it up and examined it carefully before looking at Bilbo with wonder in his eyes.
"I gave you this," Thorin breathed. "This is the bead I gave you—"
"When you proposed, yes," Bilbo replied with a smile. "I never got rid of it. After . . . well, I thought about it but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It's been in that drawer for sixty years."
"But it has no dust, no grime," Thorin protested. Even a glass bead should have gathered some tarnish in that time.
"No," Bilbo agreed. "That would have been hard for it to gather when I handled it as often as I have over the years." With another smile, Bilbo reached into the drawer and pulled out a small silver clasp, identical to the ones that currently held Thorin's braids. It was the one that used to hold Bilbo's, one that Thorin had taken from his own hair the night that he had braided in the bead, before that they had just used a bit of leather to tie the braids.
"I kept this too," Bilbo said, placing it in the dwarf's hand. "Do you still doubt that I missed you?" Thorin shook his head, swallowing around the emotion in his throat. That Bilbo would keep the things that he had given him even after he had banished him and tried to kill him, for the first time he realized just how much the hobbit loved him.
"I think," Bilbo said, causing Thorin to look up from the bead and the clasp to see the tender expression on Bilbo's face, "that they've been in that drawer long enough, don't you?" With a soft smile on his own face, Thorin began the act of braiding Bilbo's hair.
"Do you care how I do it?" Thorin asked quietly.
"Just pick," Bilbo replied, leaning lazily against his lover. "You're the one that has to look at it."
ooOO88OOoo
There we are all, a new chapter. Like with my other Bagginshield fic they kinda commandeered the latest chapter. It wasn't supposed to happen this way, but I kinda like it and hope that you do as well :)
As always, thank you to everyone who took the time to read this chapter or to add it to your alerts or favorites.
And a special thank you to those of you who reviewed, you all really make my day :)
Well, that's all for now folks! I hope you enjoyed it and would love to hear what you thought (even if you hated it) so please leave me a review if you have time and/or feel so inclined.
Stickdonkeys.