After they'd eaten their fill in breakfast, Bilbo had sat at the table silently and stared off into the distance, unable to fully believe how easily he had fallen into his routine. He wasn't hosting Balin or Dwalin, or even Gandalf- Smaug the Terrible, the Chiefest of Calamities, was currently dozing in front of his fireplace with a contented expression and a belly full of food. As Bilbo watched, trying to keep calm, Smaug rolled and bared his stomach to the fire like a lazy cat in the sunshine, his head lolling back against the edge of the blanket nest he'd made.

Bilbo's lips twitched, trying to smile at the gesture, but he refused to let them.

A dragon rolling over was not cute, for land's sake! Bilbo shook his head and drank deeply from his cup, contemplating a stronger sauce to add to his tea, and kept watching the dragon-man sleep.

Should he send word to Gandalf or the dwarves at Erebor? Perhaps they could help him evict the wyrm in man shape without badly damaging Bag End; he wanted his hole to remain intact. However, the more he thought about it, the less likely it became that he and his lovely Bag End would survive Thorin's attack on Smaug. Gandalf had a slightly higher success rate, given time, but Bilbo knew of no sure way to contact the wizard very quickly.

"Thief," Smaug's rumbling voice snapped Bilbo from his thoughts and he jumped on his stool.

"Yes?!" He managed, setting his cup down hard. 'Wh-What is it?" He glanced back at the dragon and, to his surprise; the dragon was staring back at him. Smaug had rolled onto his stomach again and, with his hands folded under his chin, was regarding him with something unnamable in the depths of his eyes.

"I can hear the whirring of your little brain over the beating of your heart." He claimed, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Do be quiet, thiefling."

Bilbo's mouth floundered for something to say; he tried to form a good response, but he gave up with a sigh and hurried back to the study. With the soft mid-winter light flowing in through the sole round window in the wall, the hobbit slumped into his favorite chair and gazed blindly out at the snow.

'There is a dragon. In my house.' Bilbo thought dumbly. 'I just ate breakfast with the Chiefest of Calamities.' Rolling over the idea in his head, Bilbo reached for his pipe, only to find that it wasn't there, and he sighed deeply. He couldn't stay in his study forever; his pipe was proof enough of that. The little room was nowhere near stocked with provisions, and Bilbo sadly admitted that no respectable hobbit could live in their study alone.

With that in mind, Bilbo pulled himself up out of his chair and, crossing the room, he started thinking up what he would write to Gandalf to explain the wyrm in his main room.

"And the burglar returns." Smaug rumbled, stretching out and pointing his toes. "Missing something?" The dragon lifted his hand in the air and Bilbo gawked at the pipe caught between his thin fingers. "Your little... smoke puffer, perhaps?"

"Pipe." Bilbo corrected, trying in vain to snatch it back from him. "Give it back." He tried for it once, twice, but by then the dragon was upright and holding him back at the arm's reach of his man body. He tipped upside-down and spilled the pipeweed ashes upon the green and white carpet. "Be careful!" Bilbo blurted, tugging on the bare arm holding him back.

"Oh?" Suddenly Smaug's straight arm bent and, falling with his collar against Smaug's forearm, Bilbo was nearly nose-to-nose with the dragon-man. "How careful should I be, little hobbit?"

"Certainly more careful than you are with me!" Bilbo managed, taking his pipe back sourly as Smaug fixed his gaze on him. "This was a gift from old Hamfast on his last birthday..." Bilbo righted himself, backing out of the dragon-man's reach as he pretended to study his pipe. "I quite like this pipe..."

"With reason, I presume." Suddenly Bilbo was lying on the hearth and Smaug had his pipe in both hands like a mother loving her child. "Fine craft," Smaug nodded, leaning back on his elbows -one of which pinned Bilbo. "and a steady hand did the engraving. However, little thief, this pipe has no monetary value. It is hardly a coin in the great dwarf halls of Erebor. I see no valuable metal or stones embedded within your 'pipe'."

"It's cherry!" Bilbo cried, thrashing vainly. "That pipe was the last bit of cherry wood the Shire's seen since the Reckoning! It's one of a kind and lined with pure silver!" He managed to push up on his hands, scowling at the dragon, and held out a hand for his pipe. "And I see value in it."

Surprisingly enough, a familiar weight settled in his palm.

"You elude me, little thief." Smaug lifted his elbow, stretching out languidly, and Bilbo paused as a smattering of scaled across his trunk caught the light. "It is worthless."

"Haven't you heard of sentimental value?" Bilbo demanded.

"No."

Sighing, Bilbo sat up and ignored the shimmering belly scales, and he got to his feet slowly. He had read about dragon spell earlier and didn't want to risk the spell falling on him.

"I'm going-" "-nowhere." Smaug caught Bilbo's shirttails and soon the hobbit was back on his bottom. "I do not trust, little thief, that you won't procure aid whilst out. We shall depart at noon, when the sun is highest."

"Noon?!" Bilbo spluttered, "That's hours away!"

"Sleep." Smaug's golden eyes slipped closed. "Throw another log on the fire, thief. I chill." Bilbo struggled to sit up, managing it after a moment, and looked back at the firm hand caught in his shirt with dismay. He had no chance to dislodge it, lest he rip his shirt or wake the beast, and as he looked around he realized he had little to do but what the dragon had suggested.

Shifting a little to get comfortable and sweeping the ashes into the fire with the hearth brush, Bilbo pulled a corner of blanket for himself and, setting a pair of logs on the fire, he curled toward the flames resignedly. If he were to sleep on the hearth, Bilbo decided he would be the warmer of the two. And he was, for as long as he was conscious.

A heat was against his back, hot as the summer sun when he was barely of age, and Bilbo's front was soothed by the flickering flames he'd set together. Bilbo relished both in the chill of winter, even underground, and he felt his body relax in the heat as he fell into sleep. His mind was away from dragons and fires and 'what-do-I-do's; it was among the adventures and back amongst the people of Dale, where he and the company of thirteen were celebrated as heroes and where the King Under the Mountain was the stout one who walked on two legs.

He barely felt the dragon stir, and he didn't stir in retaliation when a limb pulled him closer to the heat. He didn't see the dragon fix his lazy gold gaze on his face, or see the calculations of his worth in the dragon-man's eyes, and he did not see the flash that crossed the face of the dragon in man's form when he stirred lightly to pull the blanket around him a bit tighter.